


I want you back

by thelastperformer



Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Horror, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Non-Graphic Violence, Paranormal, Psychological Horror, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 22:30:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 41,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6132201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelastperformer/pseuds/thelastperformer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Worry caught up with the pain in Woohyun’s throat the first night they didn’t find Sunggyu. It lodged itself in to his heart when they didn’t find him in any of his usual hangouts, or by the next morning.<br/>He began to panic by the end of the second night.<br/>They decided to split up and look around the city for him if he didn’t show up by the next night.<br/>He didn’t, and they didn’t find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro

**Author's Note:**

> **I'm not trying to depict Infinite as they are as people, but rather as their "image," so try to imagine this more like they're playing characters in a movie.**

It was early morning when they saw the news. Hoya and Sungjong were buying groceries, carefully saving every cent they could. The street was close to empty, and the store owners were eager enough for business to haggle.  
“Hey, Sungjong!”  
Hoya was a few feet down the road, carrying baskets and counting coins and bills as he waited for Sungjong to catch up.  
He was stopped at the window of an electronics store, staring at the tv.  
“Hyung,” he said. He opened his mouth to tell him to come watch the program, but he didn’t realize he didn’t make a sound.  
“What?” Hoya asked. There was an uneasy feeling in the air as he made his way back to his younger friend. “What is it?”  
His eyes followed Sungjong’s, and they watched the news in quiet devastation. Their vegetables were beginning to sweat in their bags, but neither of them noticed. All thoughts of their other errands slipped their minds. It was five full minutes in to the next news story when their minds kicked in again.  
“We have to tell Sunggyu hyung.”  
The first place they went was Myungsoo’s apartment. (Technically, it was Myungsoo’s, but it was their usual hangout because it was the biggest of all of their places.) Myungsoo was half asleep on the couch, and Sungyeol was in the kitchen with Dongwoo.  
“You just let yourselves in?” Myungsoo groaned as he sat up. “I guess you aren’t the only ones.” He looked at their colorless faces and started to stand. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”  
“Stay calm, okay?” Hoya said carefully. “We need to tell you something.”  
“What are you talking about?” Myungsoo asked, taking the bags from Sungjong.  
Dongwoo and Sungyeol wandered out of the kitchen at the sound of Hoya’s voice. “What’s going on?”  
“There’s been an accident.”  
“We need to call Woohyun hyung.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“What’s going on?”  
The news spilled from their lips without their meaning to and tears fell from their eyes without their realizing it. Myungsoo dropped the bags of groceries. They quietly made motions to call Woohyun and tell him. They would need to tell Sunggyu soon.  
The thought of it felt like a pit in their stomachs.  
Sungyeol called Woohyun as soon as he could think straight enough to focus on what he needed to do.  
“Hello?” He answered solemnly.  
“Did you hear?” Sungyeol asked gently. He could tell from Woohyun’s voice that he had.  
“I just did.” He paused. “Are you all together?”  
“Hoya and Sungjong told us.”  
“Does Hyung know?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“I’ll tell him,” Woohyun said. “Are you at Myungsoo’s? I’ll come by there later.”  
“Yeah, we’re here.”  
There was another quiet pause. “Bye, Sungyeol.”  
“See you later.”  
There was another moment, another hesitation between them, before Woohyun hung up.  
Woohyun took a deep breath after he hung up. He didn’t know why he wanted to be the one to tell Sunggyu, but he did. It had to be him. Who else would do it?  
Woohyun left his house with a heavy weight on his shoulders. There were a few places he knew to look for Sunggyu. He found him on the way to Myungsoo’s apartment.  
He greeted him with a smile. “Woohyun! How are you? Have you eaten?”  
Woohyun tried to smile. “Hyung.”  
Sunggyu’s smile faltered. “What’s going on?”  
“Hyung, I… There’s no easy way to say this. I know you don’t have a tv, so you don’t see the news.”  
“What is this?” Sunggyu tensed, trying to hold a smile, hoping to god that Woohyun was playing some sort of prank on him.  
He knew better.  
“There was an accident. They said there’s no survivors. I know your sister was supposed to come back today, but she isn’t, Hyung.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. He tried. He avoided details, avoided imagining what she went through. “She’s… Hyung, she…”  
Sunggyu wasn’t looking at him anymore. His head fell slowly, eyes unmoving, until he was looking at the ground.  
“She’s dead.”  
Sunggyu was very still for a brief moment. He started shaking. He nearly fell, made no move to catch himself. Woohyun grabbed on to his arms, leaning down to talk to his friend face-to-face.  
“Hyung?”  
Sunggyu’s opened his mouth to talk, with just enough breath to say one word, just barely loud enough for Woohyun to hear.  
“No.”  
“Hyung, listen to me. Can you hear me? Hyung.”  
Without even realizing he was being held, Sunggyu twisted out of Woohyun’s arms and started running.  
“Hyung!”  
He thought of chasing him. There was a part of him that wanted to grieve. There was another part that wanted to take care of Sunggyu, but Woohyun thought it would be better to give him some time alone. He swallowed his worry and went to meet everyone else at Myungsoo’s apartment.  
They all stood when Woohyun came in, expecting to say something to Sunggyu.  
“Woohyun?”  
“Where’s Sunggyu hyung?”  
“Is he okay?”  
Woohyun shook his head, pain caught in his throat.  
They all sat down again slowly, not realizing their legs giving out. Woohyun joined them, sitting next to Myungsoo on the ground. The groceries were next to him, forgotten and wilting.  
“Let’s go see him tomorrow,” Sungyeol said softly. They murmured agreements.  
Worry caught up with the pain in Woohyun’s throat the first night they didn’t find him. It lodged itself in to his heart when they didn’t find him in any of his usual hangouts, or by the next morning.  
He began to panic by the end of the second night.  
They decided to split up and look around the city for him if he didn’t show up by the next night.  
He didn’t, and they didn’t find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a messy work in progress, but I'm a couple chapters in to writing it already and figured I might as well start posting it. Hope you guys enjoy it!


	2. Day 1

The boys slept restlessly in Myungsoo’s cramped apartment. Sungyeol and Sungjong woke up first. They looked at each other with glassy eyes, trying to silently confirm that they hadn’t been dreaming but wishing that they didn’t see the confirmation in the other’s eyes.  
The two stepped between heads and bodies and feet to carefully make their way to the kitchen.  
“It doesn’t really feel real, does it?” Sungjong asked in a hushed voice.  
“I guess it never does, does it?” Sungyeol asked in return. They quietly grabbed bread and jam from the refrigerator and ate breakfast, sitting on the cold floor of the kitchen.  
“We’ll go see Hyung today, right?”  
Sungyeol nodded. “We should,” he paused as he ate. He added thoughtfully, “let’s buy him some coffee and take it to him. Woohyun can buy it.”  
Sungjong laughed a little. “That’s a good idea.”  
Hoya woke up next, followed shortly by Woohyun. They joined Sungjong and Sungyeol in the kitchen, helping themselves to Myungsoo’s fridge.  
“What time is it?” Woohyun asked through a mouthful of food. He sat down next to Sungjong and leaned on him.  
“Almost ten,” he answered.  
“We should wake up Hyung and Myungsoo so we can go to Sunggyu hyung’s,” Woohyun mumbled sleepily with closed eyes. He chewed slowly.  
“Sungyeol hyung said you should buy him coffee.”  
“What?” His face scrunched, but he made no move to retaliate.  
Hoya cracked a smile. “You should,” he said with a nod.  
“Hey…”  
They fell quiet as reality set in on them again. Woohyun cracked his eyes open enough to look at his food while he ate, but any thought he tried to say was interrupted by the thoughts of Sunggyu’s sister.  
“It feels the same, but we moved rooms,” Hoya said, trying to smile, trying to lighten the mood. The others laughed stiffly.  
Sungyeol interrupted the silence. “Hoya, let’s go wake up Dongwoo hyung and Myungsoo,” he said. He pulled Hoya up and dragged him in to the next room.  
Dongwoo and Myungsoo woke up slowly, unbelieving of the day before.  
“Did it really happen?” Dongwoo asked, eyes only half open. He hunched over himself as he tried to wake up, looking up at Hoya.  
Hoya nodded.  
Myungsoo stayed lying down until he was awake and realization hit him full-force. He hadn’t moved since Hoya and Sungjong told him the day before.  
He thought of her fondly, how she dressed up for him, how Sunggyu teased her for it, and how cute she always was when they argued.  
When they got mixed up with a bad gang and she was kidnapped, they all went to save her. But it was only Sunggyu and Myungsoo that needed to be hospitalized afterwards. She cried so much. The rest of them laughed and teased the two confined to beds to try to make her feel better, unable to contain their joy and relief that she was safe and sound.  
She cried even when they tried to make her laugh, then.  
They couldn’t do anything for her now.  
“Myungsoo?”  
He looked up at Sungyeol, standing above him.  
“I’m awake,” he said. “Did you all eat already?”  
“Yeah, we did.”  
Myungsoo stood up, lifting the groceries from yesterday morning as he did. He tossed them in the fridge and grabbed some bread for himself. Woohyun was still leaning against Sungjong, half awake. He had his phone held up to his ear.  
He paused, sitting upright. He looked at his phone and tried again.  
“What?” Myungsoo asked.  
“Hyung, did that…”  
“Sunggyu hyung’s line is disconnected. Did he forget to pay his bill?”  
Myungsoo shrugged. “Maybe his phone is dea—” he caught himself, “maybe it’s not charged.”  
“I thought we should call him before we went to see him, but I guess we can just go over to his apartment, right?”  
“I guess so,” he agreed, grabbing some breakfast for Dongwoo. Woohyun and Sungjong followed him out to the living room, and they all left the apartment, feeling just a little bit better from the sunshine. The breeze felt better than the stale air of a crowded apartment, but the tragedy left them with fatigued muscles and foggy memories of the day before. They stopped for coffee, trying to hide their anxieties about seeing how Sunggyu was doing.  
Woohyun knocked on the door to Sunggyu’s apartment, ready to smile and offer him a hug and a cup of warm coffee. The rest of them sipped quietly.  
There was no answer.  
Hoya leaned in closer to the door. He could faintly hear the laughter of an audience and the skilled speech of an emcee. “I thought Hyung didn’t have a tv?”  
“He doesn’t,” Woohyun said slowly, knocking again.  
There was something different here. Something wrong.  
The door opened.  
A handsome blonde was standing in the apartment in his bathrobe. “Can I help you?” He asked.  
They stared at him, nearly gaping.  
“Who are you?” Sungyeol asked thoughtlessly.  
“Who are you?” He shot back. “I live here.”  
“What about Sunggyu Hyung?”  
The blonde cocked his head.  
“He used to live here,” Hoya said quickly.  
“How long have you been here?” Woohyun asked. “I’m sorry. Our friend used to live here. We were looking for him.”  
“I moved in a little less than a month ago,” the blonde answered. “I don’t know who was here before. The landlord should be downstairs if you want to talk to him.”  
“Sorry for the trouble,” Dongwoo said.  
“Thanks,” Woohyun added.  
“Sorry I can’t be more help. Good luck looking for your friend,” the blonde offered, a sympathetic smile on his face.  
“Thanks,” he said again.  
The blonde shut his door.  
Woohyun heaved a sigh, his mind blank, and his heart heavy.  
“He wouldn’t have moved without telling us, right? Dongwoo asked.  
“No,” Woohyun said firmly. “Let’s go talk to the landlord.” Woohyun started down the steps, and the rest of them followed slowly. Woohyun knocked heavily on the door. He needed to know what was going on, where Sunggyu was. Why hadn’t he told them he moved?  
The landlord answered the door quickly, and recognized the group almost instantly as a group of troublemakers.  
“Can I help you?” He asked, a harsh belligerency in his voice, unlike the blonde upstairs.  
“We’re looking for Kim Sunggyu. He used to live upstairs,” Hoya said, taking a step forward. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes.  
“Yeah, I know him. Don’t know where he is.”  
“Can you tell us when he moved out?” Sungjong asked.  
“I kicked him out a little more than a month ago,” he answered. “Damn kid was always in trouble with someone. Always getting in to fights right outside the building. Can’t have that, you know? Makes me look bad and nobody wanted to move in, costing me money.”  
“You kicked him out?” Woohyun echoed angrily.  
Sungyeol put an arm in front of Woohyun. “Where did he go?” He asked, stepping in front of Woohyun. Woohyun sighed again and walked a few feet away from the door, grinding his teeth as he did.  
“Beats me.”  
“Hey,” Hoya growled, taking a step forward. Dongwoo held him back.  
“Hoya, don’t.”  
The man shut the door.  
Woohyun punched the wall. “What the hell is this?”  
Sungyeol clapped his hands on to Woohyun’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Woohyun. There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for this.”  
“His phone disconnected and he got kicked out of his apartment?” Woohyun scowled, turning around to them. “Why didn’t he tell any of us?”  
“Sunggyu hyung probably didn’t want us to worry,” Sungjong said. “Calm down, Hyung.”  
He tried. Slow breaths. Unclenched fists.  
“If he had a new place to live, he would have told us,” Myungsoo said. “Do you think he has a new apartment somewhere? That he kept secret?”  
Woohyun tensed again.  
“How do you think he could afford to let her go on that trip in the first place?” He continued. “He must not pay rent.”  
“Hey, Myungsoo.” Dongwoo hit Myungsoo’s arms, looking hard at him. “What are you trying to say?”  
“I think he was living on the streets,” he said simply, looking over at Dongwoo. “Or at least something like it.”  
“Did she tell you that?” Sungyeol asked.  
“No. What other explanation is there?”  
“Look, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Woohyun shouted. “He could have stayed with me, he knows that. I don’t believe that he doesn’t trust us enough to tell us this. There has to be another explanation. Something else going on.”  
“What else is there?” Sungjong asked quietly.  
“I don’t know. Maybe he was in trouble. Maybe he didn’t want to get us involved with some bad guys or something and so they were hiding out. The trip was to keep her safe,” Woohyun muttered, stumbling over his own words and half-formed ideas.  
“A lot of good that did.” As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. Myungsoo closed his eyes and inhaled. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense, Hyung.”  
Hoya spoke up before Woohyun could start a fight. “Well what about his phone? When was the last time any of us tried to contact him?”  
It had been a while, they realized. He was always there, with them, or at work. There was never a need to find him until now.  
“Let’s go to his work,” Sungyeol suggested. “Maybe he’s there.”  
They agreed and walked slowly to the convenience store where Sunggyu worked. Woohyun slowly tried to work out the possibilities of Sunggyu’s new home, why his phone was disconnected. The thought of Sunggyu’s distrust was seeping bitterly in to his head as they walked.  
Myungsoo was brooding now, and Dongwoo recognized it as a dangerous situation. He kept close to Myungsoo, doing his best to keep him from exploding. They were afraid to say anything that might set one of them off, and it came as a relief when they walked in to the store.  
The manager recognized the group as they filed in to the store, flooding the space with their bodies. He counted them mentally, searching for his own employee, as he stocked medicines and bags behind the counter.  
“Hyungnim,” Woohyun began softly, “sorry to ask like this. Have you seen Sunggyu hyung?”  
The manager shook his head. “He was supposed to come in to work this morning,” he answered. He was filling in for his missing employee. “I saw the news last night. Figured he needed some time off. I’m surprised he isn’t with you kids, though.”  
“To be honest, we haven’t seen him,” Hoya said.  
Sungyeol added, “Woohyun told him yesterday before any of us saw him. We were going to see him today, but…” he looked to his side, at the rest of his friends, at a loss for words. What could he say?  
“We can’t find him,” Myungsoo finished.  
The manager tilted his head, hands slowing as he worked. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. He had yesterday off since he was supposed to pick up his sister, and I haven’t seen him today. You tried calling him?”  
“Yeah, it’s no good.”  
“Hyungmin,” Woohyun said again, desperately. He leaned forward on the counter, speaking quickly and concisely. “Sunggyu hyung’s landlord said he got kicked out of his apartment a little more than a month ago. Do you know where he’s been staying since then?”  
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s news to me. You can try asking some of the other kids that work here.”  
Sungyeol nodded. “We’ll do that. Employees talk a lot to each other. What time does the next shift start?”  
“In a couple hours, at five. Two of the kids come in.”  
“Thank you, Hyungnim! We’ll be back to see you then.” Woohyun and Sungyeol took the managers hands and bowed repeatedly as they backed up and thanked him again.  
“Did you kids have lunch? Why don’t you grab something on your way out? On me. I hope you kids find him. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with, huh?” The manager said, waving as they made their way towards the front of the store. “Take care of yourselves.”  
Sungyeol ran and hugged the manager, shouting even more thanks as he did, and they all grabbed a snack and a drink and left the store. They walked aimlessly as they ate, hardly tasting their food past their growing worry.  
“What should we do now?” Myungsoo asked between sips of water. “Should we keep looking? Maybe he doesn’t want us to find him.”  
Woohyun shot him a glare.  
“I’m sorry, Hyung. Maybe he just wants to be alone is what I mean,” Myungsoo said.  
“At a time like this?” He said through a sigh. “That’s the last thing I’d want. I’d want to know there were still people around me that cared about me. That I wasn’t alone in missing her.”  
Woohyun checked his phone for the time. Twenty four hours had passed since he last saw Sunggyu. Nobody else seemed concerned except for him. Everyone they talked to was just brushing this off, like there was any way to contact him, like he hadn’t been lying for the past month about his address. Like his sister hadn’t just died and he ran off without saying anything.  
There was an itch in his muscles, the need to do something. Anything.  
Hoya stepped in to save him from going crazy. “Well we have a couple hours with nothing to do. Why don’t we go to the mall? She liked shopping, so maybe he went there thinking about her,” he suggested. Woohyun thanked him mentally.  
In the shopping mall, they asked the owners of all the stores Sunggyu and his sister liked if they’d seen him, but there was no sign of him. They split up, wanting to spend some time alone with their thoughts, and, Woohyun insisted, to cover more ground. Woohyun tried not to think about it, to not let doubt sink in to his brain. His mind was running in circles as he walked the mall, passing familiar stores and vendors.  
Hoya and Sungjong went to get something to eat, sitting in the food court and watching the faces of people pass. There was nobody they recognized.  
“What do you think, Hyung?” Sungjong asked.  
“About what?”  
“Sunggyu hyung.” He sipped his soup. “Do you think he was living on the streets? That he cancelled his phone line?”  
Hoya thought for a moment as he ate. “I believe that, but that’s not what worries me.”  
“What does?”  
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this. I think Woohyun is right to be worried, but Myungsoo is right, too,” he answered.  
“Yeah,” he agreed. There was something along this path that he didn’t like, and Hoya felt it too. Myungsoo was being very logical, but there was dread hanging over them. There was something more than death.  
The two finished eating and found Dongwoo and Sungyeol browsing stores half-heartedly.  
“Hyung,” Hoya greeted. Dongwoo waved him over. “What do you think we should do?”  
Dongwoo seemed to mull it over. “I don’t know. Woohyun is panicking, but I don’t know why. Hyung always comes to us, doesn’t he? I think he needs some time to himself, and we’ll be here to welcome him when he wants to come to us. Maybe we should have paid more attention before. If Hyung was really on the streets, wouldn’t we have noticed?”  
Hoya patted Dongwoo on the shoulder. He was always sincere, always honest.  
“It’s about five,” Sungyeol said. “Should we go back to the store?”  
“Sungjong, go get Myungsoo. We’ll find Woohyun. Meet us out front, alright?”  
Sungjong nodded and went. He knew where Myungsoo was already. He was stopped in a store that he knew she liked, picking through accessories and dresses that would have looked good on her  
Myungsoo missed her more than he was worried about Sunggyu, but he couldn’t admit that to everyone. Sunggyu hyung would turn up eventually, but she was gone forever.  
He would do anything to fix this.  
“Hyung!” Sungjong called. “Hyung, it’s past five. Hoya hyung said we should go back to Sunggyu hyungs work.”  
Myungsoo nodded, fingers clinging to a dress as he stepped away.  
Sungjong swallowed. “Hyung, I know that this is really hard for all of us. But don’t keep it all to yourself, alright? We’re going through this together.”  
Myungsoo tried to smile, wrapped an arm around his younger friend. “I know,” he said. “I miss her is all.”  
“I know, Hyung.”  
The rest of them were waiting at the front of the mall when Myungsoo and Sungjong joined them. Woohyun was looking particularly frustrated and depressed.  
“It’s only been a day.” Sungyeol smiled, patting him on the shoulders. “Don’t worry so much.”  
Woohyun shook his head. “He’s been lying to us for the past month. We have no idea where he’s been living or sleeping,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. He ran a hand through his hair. “You didn’t see him yesterday. Do you know he didn’t say anything to me before he ran off? I should have followed him, made sure he was okay.”  
Myungsoo was staring at the ground when he spoke, his voice level. “That’s the only thing that makes it feel real, isn’t it?”  
Woohyun stared at him, trying to decide whether guilt or loss was a heavier burden. “Yeah.”  
“Let’s head back to the store,” Hoya said, corralling the group and heading back to the corner store. When they walked in, they were welcomed by Sunggyu’s friends and coworkers. There was a tall man with a long nose that they recognized as one of Sunggyu’s closer friends. He was ducked in to the refrigeration units, reorganizing and repricing drinks.  
“Excuse me, Hyungnim,” Woohyun said, stepping close to him. “You’re Sunggyu hyung’s friend, right?”  
The man looked up at them and stood up straight. He was taller than they were. He nodded, looking between them with a nervous smile. “Can I help you?”  
“We’re Sunggyu hyung’s friends. My name is Woohyun.”  
“Oh.” The other man smiled, relaxing at the news. “I thought he was in trouble with someone again. He’s mentioned Woohyun to me, though. Nice to meet you.” He offered a hand.  
Woohyun took it and greeted him back with a bow. “Nice to meet you, too. Sorry to worry you.”  
“Sorry, did you say he was in trouble with someone again?” Sungjong echoed.  
His friend laughed a little, as he knelt down to continue his work. “Well, Sunggyu hyung gets in to a lot of fights, you know? A couple of times people have come in and asked me about him. Not so much lately, though.”  
“Oh.”  
“What did you need?” He asked.  
They began explaining all at once, a jumble of words falling from multiple mouths.  
“We’re looking for Sunggyu hyung.”  
“He got evicted a while ago.”  
“We can’t reach him.”  
“His phone was disconnected.”  
“We’re worried.”  
The man stared at them with wide eyes, trying to understand the mass of information. “Well,” he began slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “To be honest, I was worried about him before. This isn’t weird, okay, but I saw him heading home one night. I was going to say something to him, but I saw him meet his sister, and they took down an alley together.”  
Woohyun’s shoulders fell.  
“He never admitted it out loud, but I think he knew that I kind of figured it out. I let him do his laundry at my place and shower and stuff. Sometimes the two of them stayed the night,” the man continued. “It’s just a few blocks from here.”  
“Why didn’t you tell him to stay with you?” Sungyeol blurted out.  
“A man has his pride, you know,” the man answered with a shrug. “I saw about his sister. I’m really sorry. I’d want some time alone if I were him, too.”  
“Can you tell us where it is?” Woohyun asked.  
“I don’t know if he’d want me telling you,” the man said. He sighed. “But I guess considering the circumstances, I can.” He stood up again, pointing and giving them directions.  
They hurried down the road, following his directions as best they could. Their hearts swelled with hope and anxiety. They deflated when Sunggyu was nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry... I started this with the intention of horror... I'm not very good with mystery... please bear with me until we can get through to the emotional and horror bits...


	3. Days 2 and 3

Woohyun insisted he spend the night in Sunggyu’s alley, in case he showed up in the night. The others went home or to Myungsoo’s apartment. It was surprisingly cozy in their weathered chairs. It felt like home, being surrounded by his friend’s things. Woohyun closed his eyes and settled in to the chair. It smelled like her perfume.  
Woohyun wondered where Sunggyu slept, if she slept here.  
Just how much was he suffering alone?  
The sound of cars and the occasional passer-by kept Woohyun in a light sleep through the night. If he dreamt, it was only barely, like a projection on a wall.  
Anytime a voice pulled him out of sleep, he sat up, expecting to see Sunggyu walking in, greeting him cheerfully and teasing him about sleeping in a place like this and for worrying so much.  
Woohyun watched the sun slowly light up the alley as it rose. He hadn’t realized so much time had passed while he was struggling to sleep. His back and neck was sore, but he had an idea. Woohyun left the alley and went to his own apartment to shower and change clothes. It was a dangerous idea, and he dreaded the thought of it, but there was a chance he knew where Sunggyu was.  
He called Sungjong as he was leaving his apartment.  
“Hello, Hyung?” He sounded sleepy.  
“Sungjong,” he said brightly. “I have an idea of where to look for him. Where are you? Come with me.”  
“I’m at my place. Myungsoo hyung and Sungyeol hyung had work, so I came home.”  
“Is Hyung with you? Or Hoya?”  
“No, I don’t know if they had work or anything.”  
“Okay, well, I’ll be at your place in a little bit. I’m on my way. I’ll tell you my plan when I get there, okay?”  
Sungjong agreed and they each hung up. To be honest, Woohyun was a little bit afraid that Sungjong might not agree if he told him the plan. It was a stretch, but it was the only place he could think of to try. He was at Sungjong’s apartment in a couple minutes, and knocked on the door just as Sungjong was getting out of the shower. Woohyun welcomed himself in to the apartment, talking excitedly and nonstop, when Sungjong answered the door.  
“I know this might sound crazy, but it’s the only place I hadn’t thought to check. It’s worth a try, right? We have to try, but I don’t want to go by myself. It would make sense, right? At a time like this? That he’d go back?”  
“What?”  
“If he went back home?”  
Sungjong’s jaw dropped at the suggestion. “Are you crazy, Hyung? You know how much he hated it there.”  
“I know,” he admitted. Woohyun huffed, jamming his fingers into his jacket pockets. “But it’s the only other place I can think to look for him. Did you talk to Hoya or Dongwoo hyung?”  
“No, I only woke up when you called and then I got in the shower right after we hung up.”  
“Nevermind. I’ll call them on the train. Do you work today?”  
“No, I’m off. What about you?”  
Woohyun shrugged. “I’m off, too. But if we don’t find Hyung soon I might just take a leave of absence.”  
He wanted to say don’t be so irresponsible. Worry about yourself, too. Why are you worrying so much?  
But Sungjong knew why. He knew that Woohyun felt the same way he and Hoya did. There was a creeping underneath their skin that urged them on. Maybe it was the adrenaline of worry that kept them from thinking of death too long. Maybe that was why they were acting the way they were.  
“Let’s go,” Sungjong said instead.  
Woohyun looked relieved. He was calling Hoya and Dongwoo even as they walked to the station and bought tickets.  
“Ah, Hyung. Sorry, did I wake you up? Do you work today?” he was saying, rushing to ask favors before they boarded the train. “Oh, good. You’ll keep an eye out? Thanks. And check his work, too.” He called Hoya next. “Hey. Do you work today? Oh, really? No, it’s fine. I’m with Sungjong. I’m gonna check somewhere else, too. Thanks. Have a good day. What? No, he didn’t. You knew that already, didn’t you?”  
Sungjong listened patiently, watching the clock for when the train would arrive. He could only hear Hoya’s voice enough to hear it was his, without knowing what he was saying.  
“Thanks, Hoya. I’ll try. The train’s about to come. Have a good day at work.” Woohyun hung up and stuffed the phone in his back pocket.  
“What did he say?”  
Woohyun sighed. “He told me to slow down, not to worry so much. He said I’d wear myself out like this.”  
“I think he’s probably right.”  
He shrugged and they boarded the train. It was a short ride, just a few stops away from where they lived now. They got off and Woohyun’s legs instinctively carried them to Sunggyu’s old house.  
He could tell that the house was in mourning as he approached. There was a smell of incense and smoke that oozed in to the heavy air. Sungjong moved nervously closer to Woohyun as they reached the door and knocked.  
They heard some shuffling, some creaking, as bodies moved through the house slowly.  
Sunggyu’s mother answered the door. Woohyun looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place his face. She looked between them through puffy eyes and a rigid jaw.  
“Hello,” Woohyun began timidly. “Um, I’m a friend of Sunggyu hyung’s.”  
She looked up at Woohyun.  
His heart plummeted to his stomach as he saw in her eyes that his last plan to find any connection to his friend was gone. She didn’t know anything. She hadn’t seen her son in years.  
“What can I do for you?” She said.  
He stuttered. Sungjong put a comforting hand on his shoulder as he tried to speak. “I-I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your daughter. Did you hear from the authorities?”  
“They don’t expect to find the bodies.” Her response was simple, exhausted. “Conditions are too dangerous, they said.”  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Has your son contacted you?”  
She scoffed. “No.”  
He felt Sungjong’s hand tighten on his shoulder.  
“He’s sorry to hear it too. I’m sorry. My thoughts are with you and your family.”  
“Thank you.” She softened a bit, but only enough to tell them goodbye before she shut her door.  
Not one word of worry about her son.  
“Let’s go, Hyung.”  
Woohyun nodded, and they went back to the train station and caught the next train back home.  
“I’m out of ideas,” Woohyun said, watching the scenery pass, his head flush against the window. “What should we do?”  
“Something will turn up,” he said.  
“Am I overreacting? Am I just being crazy?” He asked. “Maybe Myungsoo is right and he just wants to be alone for a while.”  
Sungjong shrugged. “I don’t know, Hyung,” he said. There were a few places he could think of they hadn’t looked yet. He was sure that Woohyun had thought of at least most of them.  
They left the train station at their stop and Sungjong followed Woohyun as he absent-mindedly went to all the places Sunggyu liked to go. They passed through the pool hall, the arcade, the park without him realizing. Sungjong followed him, worried about what his hyung might do if he wasn’t being watched.  
They met Dongwoo on the street as he was shopping.  
“Did you go to his work?” Woohyun asked instead of greeting him.  
Dongwoo laughed a little as he stuttered through an excuse. “I had to buy food. I was on my way now. Where did you guys go?”  
“Sunggyu hyung’s old home,” Sungjong answered. “Hyung thought he might have gone home, but his parents didn’t know anything about it.”  
“Too bad,” he said.  
“There’s no sign of him,” Woohyun said. “At least none that I can find.”  
Dongwoo patted him on the arms and shoulders, murmuring consolations as he did.  
“Why aren’t you more worried, Hyung?” His voice was louder and rougher than usual. Dongwoo looked surprised at the outburst.  
“Don’t be like that,” Sungjong said softly, moving to grab Woohyun’s arm.  
“I am worried,” Dongwoo said. “Why do you think I’m not worried? His sister died.”  
Woohyun flinched, like it was the first time he heard the news.  
Dongwoo continued, “I am worried, but we’re all sad, too, you know? Why aren’t you more sad about her?”  
“I am sad about her.”  
“I know, so don’t tell me I’m not worried about Hyung.”  
Woohyun bit his lip and relaxed. “I’m sorry.”  
“It’s okay,” he said, wrapping an arm around Woohyun. “Let’s go see if there’s any news about his work.”  
Woohyun mumbled more apologies as they walked, and Dongwoo did his best to laugh them off. They walked in to the store in relatively good spirits. Woohyun had calmed down enough to feel sleepy again, and Sungjong had shaken the paranoia he’d been feeling.  
“Oh, I’m glad you all came.” It was Sunggyu’s tall friend. “I was worried I’d have to come find you.”  
Sungjong tensed.  
“Did you hear from Hyung?”  
“He called me earlier.”  
Sungjong realized what the feeling he’d been feeling was. It was like watching a storm blow in. There was no calm, just the apprehension of watching dark clouds cover the sky, and nothing you could do but prepare for the worst.  
Woohyun slammed his hands down on the counter. “What did he say? Is he okay? Where is he?”  
His friend looked sorry. “He wanted me to take his and his sister’s stuff to my place to take care of it. He said he didn’t know where he was.”  
Woohyun’s face fell.  
“How did he sound?” Dongwoo asked.  
“Exhausted, mostly.”  
“He doesn’t know where he is?” Woohyun repeated slowly.  
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “He said he didn’t know when I asked.”  
“If he calls again can you please tell him to contact one of us, too?” Dongwoo asked with a laugh. The other man laughed timidly and agreed softly.  
They left with a hole in their heart. “Myungsoo should be off work by now, right? Let’s go to his place,” Dongwoo suggested. “It’s closest.” Sungjong agreed, and Woohyun followed wordlessly.  
Myungsoo was lying face down on his bed when they found him. He glanced up at them only long enough to tell them to make themselves at home, but he was taking a nap. Dongwoo put his groceries in the fridge and parked himself on the sofa with Sungjong. Woohyun sat at the small dining room table, trying to sort out his feelings and thoughts, trying to ignore Dongwoo’s loud laughter at the tv or their quick-fire bickering. Sungyeol stopped by for a little while to ask what updates there were on Sunggyu, and went home after that.  
Myungsoo woke up a few hours later. They all had dinner and went to their own houses quietly, hoping to god that they’d be able to stand being on their own for long enough to get through the night.  
Woohyun sat up late that night, his back and neck still sore from sleeping in the alleyway, wrapped up in a blanket outside his apartment, with a cup of tea in his hands.  
There were clouds that blocked out most of the night’s light. The storm was blowing in from the coast now. Had it rained recently? Had Sunggyu and his sister been stuck outside in the rain, or was that one of the nights they stayed with someone else?  
It would probably rain tomorrow, Woohyun thought. It would be the same storm that killed Sunggyu’s sister. The same storm that washed away Sunggyu’s secrets to leave a bitter distrust in Woohyun’s mind. Woohyun went to bed when the wind started to pick up. He woke up to rumbling thunder and rain.  
He stopped by the alley on his way to work. It was empty. Sunggyu’s friend must have gotten their things after work yesterday. Woohyun went to work.  
He was wet and cold, and his mind was numb. The day passed without much business, and Woohyun went home. He called the others, and they all agreed to split up to search the city. They all took different trains and went to different sides of the city, to all the places they’ve ever been or ever talked about going to. Hoya and Dongwoo even went to talk to some of the kids who were always picking fights with Sunggyu. There was no sign of him, no word of him or from him. It was as if he’d disappeared.  
They went to Sunggyu’s work one more time. They hadn’t heard from him.  
They were on their way to Myungsoo’s apartment when Sungyeol spoke up.  
“Hey, I guess it’s a long shot, but nobody else mentioned it,” he explained, running his hand through his hair. “Should we go to the coast? You know, where he was supposed to pick her up?”  
Woohyun’s mind stopped, all his other plans dissolving at the suggestion.  
“It’s kind of far,” Hoya said. “But it would make sense if he’d gone there.”  
Woohyun wondered why he hadn’t thought of the coast before.  
“We should all go together,” Sungjong suggested, his voice heavy with emotion.  
He’d been too focused on Sunggyu.  
“It would be nice to say goodbye to her,” Myungsoo said with a small smile. “Even if Hyung isn’t there.”  
He hadn’t thought of her. He didn’t want to.  
“Woohyun, what’s wrong?” Dongwoo asked. “Are you crying?”  
Woohyun wiped his eyes and nodded. Dongwoo hugged him and laughed. “It’s okay, Woohyun. It’s okay, don’t cry.”


	4. Days 4 and 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day four flies by at the beginning, keep an eye out for it lol.

The next morning, they all went to work to get the day after that off. They were on the train the morning after that, headed to the coast. The ride was a few hours long, and they rode mostly in silence. It was still raining when they left, but as they got farther from home, the rain cleared, but the sky was still cloudy.  
Hoya was watching the scenery nervously, every cell in his body screaming at him to get off at the next stop, turn around, and go back home, but if Sunggyu was in the middle of whatever this was, he knew he was ready to dive in headfirst. He was just hoping they came out of it okay. Sungjong was with him, and they’d exchanged muttered promises of who they’d each look after in case something happened before they boarded.  
They arrived safely, and Hoya and Sungjong were the first off the train, scoping out the area. The others followed.  
It seemed safe enough.  
They walked down to the coast. The wind was picking up again, and the sky was getting dark. Woohyun was hoping they’d see him there, standing on the coast, staring out at sea, waiting for them to come comfort him, but the seaside was empty.  
The storm came suddenly, with heavy drops and quick winds that sent the group back in to the city for safety. They found shelter in a cafe, hoping to wait out the storm and, if possible, return to the coast. Their hearts were heavy with a mix of emotions, and their mouths were shut. They drank silently, watching the rain fall, looking for a familiar face through the window. Nobody wanted to initiate the conversation.  
There had been no sign of disaster at the seaside, no sign that anybody had died. Myungsoo’s eyes unfocused from the window as he took small sips of his drink, thinking of Sunggyu’s sister, how badly he wanted to see her again, how he wished he’d treated her better all those times she was cute to him, that he could articulate just how he felt about her. He wished there was something he could do.  
“Myungsoo?”  
It was Hoya’s voice.  
He looked at him.  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yes,” Myungsoo answered. He blinked his thoughts aside as he focused on his friend. “Do you think the rain will stop?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Do you think Sunggyu hyung is around here?” Woohyun asked.  
Myungsoo wanted to say something, that it was disrespectful to only focus on Sunggyu when his sister was lying in the ocean somewhere.  
Sungjong answered instead. “I don’t know. We could look around the malls and arcades and stuff and see if he’s around any of them.”  
“It’s better than waiting around here,” Sungyeol agreed. He stood up. “I know a couple places around here. Should we go?”  
They all agreed and wandered the city until they were forced in to the nearest building when the storm worsened. They shook themselves off and huddled next to the window, asking each other if their umbrellas were broken or if they were okay or to hold them because it was cold.  
Dongwoo and Sungyeol looked around the shop. It was a small grocery store, with lots of odds and ends, little knickknacks, that Dongwoo liked. He’d pick one up to show to Sungyeol, who would grin and tell him it was cute. Hoya watched them wander, standing next to the rest of them as they watched the rain.  
He didn’t feel on edge here, and could watch Dongwoo and Sungyeol peacefully. They went to the counter to buy a keychain, and Sungyeol asked the girl at the counter if she knew the weather forecast and the quickest way to the train station.  
“It’s supposed to rain through the night, but let up tomorrow,” she answered, ringing Dongwoo up and counting his change. “The quickest way to get to the subway or train station is by bus, but they don’t run when the rain is this bad.”  
“Really? Well, we could walk,” Sungyeol said thoughtfully.  
“Well, be careful.” She said, handing Dongwoo his keychain. “And keep an eye on the time. When the weather gets bad, sometimes they’ll delay the trains and only run the last one, so you’ll want to get there with plenty of time before then.”  
Sungyeol continued talking to her for a few more minutes as Dongwoo brought back his keychain to show everyone else. Hoya was looking at it, half listening to Sungyeol’s conversation, only half watching everyone else.  
Sungyeol yelled. “Really?”  
Hoya looked up, skin prickling with anticipation and adrenaline.  
“Woohyun!” He shouted, waving him over. Woohyun walked over quietly, cautiously. Hoya followed.  
“What is it?”  
He had his phone in his hand and could barely speak. “She said she’s seen him.”  
“What?”  
“She’s seen Sunggyu hyung. I showed her a picture and asked but she said she’s seen him.”  
The others rushed to the counter as Woohyun started asking questions.  
“Are you sure it was him? When did you last see him?”  
“How did he look?”  
“Was he okay?”  
She remembered him because he was handsome, she said, and because his hand was injured and bleeding, like he’d been fighting. His money was crumpled when he gave it to her, but he had a lot in his pockets. He’d been in the other night, but came in earlier that day.   
“What do we do? He’s here somewhere,” Sungjong asked.  
“But I doubt that he’ll leave,” Myungsoo countered. “At least we know he’s here.”  
“Doesn’t that mean we shouldn’t leave?” Woohyun said.  
“Can we afford it?”  
“Between all of us? We can probably get a hotel room or two…”  
“It’s only a couple hours by train, though.”  
“We barely got to stay by the coast before it started raining,” Myungsoo said. “I wanted to pay tribute to her, but we didn’t have time.”  
“Miss, where’s the closest and cheapest hotel?”  
She thought for a few minutes before saying she wasn’t sure, but there might be one a couple blocks down. They decided to check it out. Hoya stiffened with every step, praying that she was wrong and they would have to go home and come back tomorrow. He walked in front, ready to push them out of harm’s way.  
It was a big building, with a large (but empty) parking area in the back that led underground. It was probably filled during the Summer, but it was empty and still in the off months. They walked in to the lobby. It was dimly lit and warm as they entered.  
The woman at the front desk welcomed them. “How can I help you?”  
Hoya craned his neck back and forth as Sungyeol and Woohyun talked to the receptionist. There was something wrong about this place, something bad. Why didn’t the others feel it?  
“Hyung,” Sungjong said quietly, at his side. “I don’t know about this place.”  
“I don’t think we should stay here,” Hoya said. The air was heavy in the lobby, and he felt sick to his stomach when he looked up the stairs or down any halls. His legs felt ready to sprint, and it felt hard to breathe.  
The woman kept her eyes on Myungsoo. He looked back at her, but then tried to ignore the eyes pouring in to him by talking to Dongwoo about the décor.  
“Sungyeol,” Hoya began, striding over to the counter. The woman looked at him, raising a brow. “I don’t think we can afford to stay here,” he said tactfully, locking eyes with the woman. She smirked at him before looking back down at the paperwork.  
“It’s very cheap,” Sungyeol said without looking up, filling out the papers. Woohyun was leaning on the counter, supervising Sungyeol as he did. “We can even get two rooms if we all chip in.”  
“No, Sungyeol, you don’t understand.” Hoya reached to stop Sungyeol from writing.  
He saw Woohyun stand up straight from the corner of his eyes. The room had gotten quiet without him realizing.  
A familiar voice spoke from behind him.  
“Guys?” It said slowly. “What are you doing here?”  
Hoya and Sungyeol turned around to match everyone else’s gaping stares.  
It was Sunggyu.


	5. Sunggyu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : This chapter has implications of suicide.

The world stopped when Woohyun told him.  
_There was an accident. They said there’s no survivors._  
He imagined the ground falling from beneath him when he realized that she was gone forever. She wasn’t coming back.  
_She’s dead._  
She’s dead.  
Woohyun was in his face, his mouth moving, but no sound coming out. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t breathe enough air to catch his breath.  
Like he was drowning.  
Like she had.  
He had to get away from here. Away from everything.  
He ran.  
The first place he went was the narrow alley they’d been staying in. He’d fought too much with the kids and punks who lived around them, the ones always trying to get back at him for something. When the landlord kicked them out, Sunggyu told her to go live with their parents.  
She refused. She wanted to be with the brother she loved, she said.  
He’d never hated himself or loved her more.  
She decorated the place well. All of her cute touches she’d taped up to the wall, all of the things that were important to her—they were all in that alley. Sunggyu ran his hands over the photos, the boxes, the fishbowl. The fishbowl was the only happy memory they’d had while they were home.  
He tried to breathe, to keep himself from feeling immense loss. He covered his eyes and tried to breathe evenly, but her echoes, her memories, her touch were all around him. He tried to breathe between sobs and hot tears.  
_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you so much._  
He couldn’t stay here.  
Not anymore.  
Sunggyu stood up, steadying himself against the wall. He wanted to leave. He couldn’t stay here. He looked back at everything. As badly as he wanted to leave everything, he couldn’t bear to do it. He took the fishbowl and left.  
He needed to get as far away from here as he could. He ran.  
He ran until it was dark. He focused on the burning in his lungs, his legs. His throat. His heart. Anything to avoid thinking of his cute little sister and how he’d never see her again.  
He only stopped when his body was so ragged he couldn’t run anymore. He tripped and fell, dropping the fishbowl, filled with small memories of his sister. They scattered in front of him and all he could do was stare at the broken glass and the spilled water through blurry eyes.  
He cried with uneven sobs until he lost his voice. He cried until had the strength to stand up and the self-control to look around and the sense to realize that he had no idea where he was.  
He picked up what he could of his sisters effects and started walking, trying to get a sense of where he was, but there wasn’t anything he recognized.  
The sun started to rise without Sunggyu realizing, and he caught sight of himself in the window of a store. He’d never seen himself look worse. He stopped in a small corner store across the street and went in to the bathroom, running the faucet and plugging the sink. Sunggyu washed his face gently.  
The water smelled fresh and clean, felt cool on his flushed face. How could anything that felt so nice be so deadly?  
He wondered what drowning felt like. Did she suffer?  
Sunggyu closed his eyes. He couldn’t imagine going on without her.  
He took a deep breath and submerged his face.  
When he opened his eyes, water was overflowing and spilling from the sink on to the floor and his legs. He coughed up some water and looked at himself in the mirror.  
There wasn’t a thing he liked looking back at him. There was nothing in him that could have protected his sister from anything. There was nothing that could bring her back. He was alone.  
Sunggyu stopped the sink and drained it, swallowing hard and trying not to wonder what it was he was trying to do by plugging it in the first place. He left the bathroom and left the corner store, and he walked some more, no particular goal in mind, no particular thoughts in mind.  
He thought of home, how badly he’d like to sleep with his sister next to him, even if it was just an alleyway lined with cardboard.  
He left everything behind because he didn’t want to see it, but he missed it now.  
He missed his sister.  
Sunggyu found the closest bench he could and sat down. All of the images of his sister he could remember played in his mind at once in a haze of fatigue like a fever dream. He slept, and dreamt of his sister, alive, laughing and arguing with him.  
When he woke up, it was midday, and the sides of his head were throbbing in pain. Sunggyu stumbled back to a convenience store, grabbing whatever he could find that didn’t remind him of her, anything he thought he’d be able to stomach. He paid for it with crumpled bills and ate, sitting outside on the curb with his eyes closed as busy people made their way through the streets.  
He couldn’t be this irresponsible, could he? There were still things he needed to take care of. Sunggyu listed them in his head as he finished his food. When he was done, he went and found a payphone. He called his friend from work.  
“Hello?”  
“Hey. It’s Sunggyu.”  
“Hyung? Where are you? Your friends were looking for you. They’re worried.”  
Oh.  
“Hey, can you do me a favor? You know where we were staying, right? Can you please grab our stuff and take care of it? Just for a while. I can’t do it right now.”  
“Hyung, _where are you?_ ”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Your friends are worried about you. They even came to the store to ask about you.”  
It felt like it weeks had passed since he’d seen or even thought about them. “Will you take our stuff? I don’t know who else I can ask.”  
“I’ll take it, Hyung, but…”  
“Thanks. I’ll come back for it soon. I just can’t do it right now.”  
The other line was quiet.  
“Hyung, are you okay?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Why didn’t you tell your friends when you got kicked out?”  
“I don’t know.” His friend fell quiet again. “Thank you for taking care of our stuff.”  
“Come back soon. We’re worried about you.”  
“Bye.” Sunggyu hung up the phone. He counted how much money he had in his pockets and wallet. (He’d finally saved up enough to be able to lease an apartment for the two of them.) He had more than enough to take a train back home.  
He had enough to go to the beach. To the place where he was supposed to pick her up.  
Sunggyu stuffed the money in his pocket.

It took a little while to find the train station from where he was, but he boarded and let the train find his destination. He went straight to the beach, steaming in whatever sunlight was left, watching and listening to the waves roll and crash at his feet. There was no noise from inside his head, no thoughts or words telling him he should be anywhere else but here, listening for an echo of his sister. He barely saw the horizon in front of him.  
He was very dehydrated now, but he only knew because he couldn’t cry anymore.  
It wasn’t until the moon started to rise that Sunggyu walked back to the city. He was a dirty mess, and he was exhausted. When was the last time he’d eaten? Or showered?  
His head was killing him.  
He went to a small grocery store and grabbed some snacks and a large bottle of water. The girl at the register was nice and polite as she rung him up, and helped him count out his money when he struggled to do it through his throbbing headache. He stuffed the rest in to his pockets and thanked her and walked back to the coast to eat until it got dark.  
His headache didn’t go away after eating and drinking, and he sat very still for a long time, focusing on the pain, without thinking about what to do to stop it. He remembered looking up at the moon before lying down and closing his eyes, the sand cold and refreshing on his face.  
Sunggyu woke up when it started to rain.  
He thought for a moment he might drown, but he sat up and realized it was only cold drops of rain, not ocean spray or waves that were soaking his hair and clothes.  
His legs were aching from the days before, and it took a lot to force himself to stand up and walk to higher ground when the water started to get violent. He had no idea what day it was or what time it was, just that he needed to sleep. Sunggyu walked again in to the city, reveling in the cleansing rain, until he found an empty parking garage to sit in. He settled down next to a pillar and drank what was left of his water and ate what was left of his snacks, listening to the rain fall and the wind blow.  
He didn’t realize his eyes had closed until he opened them.  
“What are you doing out here? Have you been here all night?”  
Sunggyu looked up. There was a woman standing next to him, leaning down to look at him.  
“What time is it?” He asked.  
“It’s about five am,” she said. “Funny you chose a hotel to sleep under. Why didn’t you just come inside?”  
“I don’t have money to do that,” Sunggyu answered, scratching his head. His legs and head still hurt, but he pushed himself off the ground. He would have to find somewhere else to sleep.  
“You look like you’ve been having a rough time. It’s off-season, so we have lots of room. Why don’t you come in? Free of charge. You can stay at least until you’ve had a decent sleep,” she offered.  
His back hurt, too, he realized. The promise of a real bed was too much to resist, and Sunggyu agreed and followed the woman in to the hotel. She took him to a room with a bed and a bathroom, apologizing for the size of it.  
He walked in, running his fingers over the walls, the mirrors, the sheets, and in to the bathroom. “Thank you so much,” he said.  
“I’ll leave you alone. Call the front desk if you need anything,” she said with a smile.  
Sunggyu was admiring the room with an open mouth. “Thank you,” he said again, and heard the door shut from behind him.  
The room was warm and quiet and cozy. Sunggyu hopped in the shower and when he came back to his room, there was a fresh change of clothes for him. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, wondering how she had clothes that fit him so well. He fell in to the bed and rolled in to the covers, inhaling deeply to smell the scent of fresh laundry. He was asleep before he realized it.  
He dreamt of the woman, bringing him breakfast, smiling at him as he slept. He dreamt of his sister, screaming, voiceless, drowning. The woman was there again, leaning over him, in the mirrors, the windows, the sheets, whispering to him.  
Sunggyu woke up abruptly.  
It was noon outside, and his head was spinning. He stood himself up, sore in every fiber of his being. He tried not to think of his dreams, of the skin-crawling paranoia he felt looking in to the mirrors and out the windows.  
He’d forgotten how much he hated the sight of himself.  
Sunggyu left his room, and the woman met him halfway down the stairs. She sat him down at a table and fed him a warm lunch.  
“Did you sleep well?” She asked.  
“Yes, thank you,” he answered between bites and sips. “And thank you for the clothes. I’ll wash them before I return them. Is there a laundromat nearby?”  
She laughed as she watched him eat. “Oh, don’t worry about it. Please just relax and regain your strength.”  
Sunggyu tried to laugh, but it came only as a sigh. “Thank you,” he said one last time. She told him to leave the dishes when he was finished, no matter how much he protested.  
He went back to his room, trying to avoid looking at himself in any of the mirrors that lined the halls. He lay back down in the bed and listened to himself breathe and the rain beat against the walls until he fell asleep again.


	6. Sunggyu (pt. 2)

Sunggyu dreamt of his sister again. She was running away from him, and he chased her, calling her as loudly as he could, hearing only his voice echo off the walls, as she moved farther and farther away from him, until she was out of sight and he was out of breath. He woke up, sweating and crying, touching everything around him to try to determine what was real.  
Once his breathing and heart steadied, he checked the clock. He’d slept through dinner, but he didn’t feel any less sick or any more rested. It was about three am.  
Sunggyu left his room and explored the quiet hotel, focusing on the pain in his legs and head, rather than the ones in his chest and heart. The halls were still and dark, and there were mirrors everywhere that startled him as he turned a corner or if he turned too suddenly. His eyes wandered the halls as he looked around, catching sight of himself—was it him?—in the mirrors out of the corners of his eyes.  
Where was the elevator again? Or the stairs?  
He was so tired, he couldn’t navigate the halls. This place was impossible. Was it always this big?  
It grew darker and darker as he wandered the halls, until he was groping in front of himself, trying to see with his hands what he couldn’t with his eyes. He couldn’t find the walls, like he was walking through the darkness itself, not a darkened hotel hall.  
He could see light, far away from him.  
It was a mirror, at the end of the hall.  
Sunggyu rushed towards it, abandoning his caution.  
The woman was standing behind his image when he reached the mirror. She was smiling at him with bright eyes.  
She opened her mouth to talk, and dark, thick blood spilled from her lips.  
Sunggyu spun around and backed himself against the mirror. In front of him was the doorway to his room, brightly lit, and clean.  
He lost strength in his legs and fell to the ground, telling himself to inhale, exhale, that couldn’t have been real. It was a hallucination or something, from a lack of sleep and from grief.  
He pulled himself up slowly, looking up and down the hall for any sign of the woman, and went back in to his room, shutting and locking the door behind him.  
It was 3:05 when he went back to bed and tried to sleep.  
When Sunggyu woke up again, it was sudden and pure. He had his first grief-free thought since he’d been told his sister died, and it was horror, that he was mixed up in something he shouldn’t be, with little idea of where he was, and no way to contact anybody.  
Grief set in shortly after the thought, as he sat up slowly and caught sight of himself in the mirror.  
He berated himself for not thinking of her, for having forgotten for the fraction of a second it thought to think that she was gone forever. Sunggyu opened his door to leave.  
The words “little sister” were scribbled across the mirror in front of his door in red. Was it lipstick? Or something else?  
“Good morning.”  
The woman was looking over her shoulder at Sunggyu, slowly wiping away the writing. He looked at her. He hadn’t noticed her squatting there until she spoke. He watched her mouth move, unhearing of her voice. He looked back and forth between the woman and his reflection, trying to swallow his pain and his fear, trying to listen, not imagine red pouring from her mouth.  
She looked at him with big, bright eyes.  
“I,” he stuttered, “I’m sorry. What—what were you saying?”  
“Are you okay, sir?” She asked. She turned to him completely, abandoning her work, the words still plain in front of him, and Sunggyu winced. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you and woke you up. It seems someone was causing trouble late last night. I was just cleaning up.”  
He answered slowly. “I’m okay. I’m sorry.” He retreated in to his room and closed the door. He fell against it, choking back sobs. He wanted to go home, to be safe with his sister. But he’d sent the person than meant most to him away, and she was never coming back to him, and he had no home.  
He was always getting in trouble, always causing problems for her, and in the end he’d gotten her killed.  
He couldn’t even properly mourn her now.  
Sunggyu stood and stumbled to the bathroom. He turned on the water, trying to push thoughts of trying to drown himself out of his mind. He couldn’t do that. He didn’t have the strength to go through with it, did he?  
He swallowed hard and bit his lip, forcing himself to look at anything other than the running water.  
He saw himself in the mirror. He saw a useless big brother. A coward.  
Sunggyu screamed, trying to drown out the sound of his voice telling him how much he hated himself, how much better he’d feel if he didn’t feel anything. He kicked towels around the room and punched the wall, trying to focus on anything other than himself.  
He paused, catching sight of himself in the mirror again, and punched himself in the face.  
The mirror shattered beneath his fist and imbedded itself in to his knuckles in retaliation. Sunggyu relaxed finally, panting and exhausted. He rinsed his hand with the running water and turned it off, resigning himself to bed again. He was hungry, and his headache was coming back, but he couldn’t convince himself to stand up.  
He laid in bed for what felt like hours, eyes half open, barely aware of the clotting blood on his knuckles.  
The woman came to him in his half-dream state. The room was violet in front of him, and there were reflections of her everywhere in his vision. She leaned over him, her eyes glowing, and a smile on her face. All he could do was look up at her.  
“Your friends will be here soon,” she said, her voice echoing and vibrating all around him, “do you really want to meet them this way?”  
Sunggyu closed his eyes, and when he opened them, everything was normal, and it was still early in the afternoon. He sat up and winced when his knuckles grazed the sheets on his bed. He looked at his hand closely and went to wash the dry blood from his fingers. He avoided looking in the mirror. Sunggyu changed clothes and went down the stairs of the hotel, and left. The wind was picking up again, and he knew it would rain again soon. He stopped in the shop down the road again. He bought some bandages, some food, and some bottles of water from the girl at the counter before going back to the hotel.  
He sat in his room and wrapped his hand the best that he could, and ate and drank until he felt well enough to wish he’d bought pain killers for his headache.  
He tried to think of his dreams. Sunggyu mashed the butt of his palms in to his eyes and rubbed them until he saw stars. He was reminded again how every fiber of his being still hurt from losing his sister, but there was something else in the back of his mind.  
The woman.  
There was something about her.  
And his friends. He needed to call them, to tell them not to worry. Sunggyu stood up, black spots creeping in the sides of his vision. He steadied himself against the wall and left his room, carefully making his way down the hall.  
All of his reflections screamed at him to stop, to stay where he was. He was safe and comfortable, he needed rest. But Sunggyu knew he was without his sister and he couldn’t be alone anymore. Every step he took seemed to take the breath away from him, and he could barely breathe from the heavy air filling the halls, barely take the next step. He nearly fell when he reached the stairs, and he stumbled down them the same way.  
His vision cleared when he reached the lobby, and he could breathe easily.  
He didn’t want to meet his friends like this, did he?  
Sunggyu looked up from his feet. All of his friends were scattered across the lobby. Dongwoo and Myungsoo were next to the plants in the corner, Sungjong was close to the door, Sungyeol and Hoya were at the counter. They were all staring at him, gaping.  
Woohyun was moving, taking long strides across the room, towards him, an expression Sunggyu couldn’t read on his face. He started to panic, the feeling of not being able to breathe returning to him, in a different way from before, in a way that came from the inside instead of the outside. He remembered being told the news, running away, running, running. Had he said anything to Woohyun? How long has it been since he’d talked to him?  
Was his expression anger?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost done with the next chapter, but as I've been writing I've been realizing more and more that I made a mistake... For some reason I forgot that Hoya is his stage name, not his real name. The only reason I refer to Myungsoo is because I thought "L" would be too weird, but I didn't even think about it for Hoya lol. (He's going to stay Hoya, I just thought I'd point it out since I realized.)  
> Also I wish I'd written a bigger segment for "Back" because I like the video a lot..


	7. Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Sunggyu!

Woohyun’s arms were around him in a second. He felt Sunggyu tense, try to pull away from him, before he realized Woohyun was hugging him.  
He raised his arms hesitantly and hugged him back, a wave of emotions running through him like adrenaline and the desire to run. Woohyun had no intention of letting him go, and held on to his hand when the rest of the group ran to greet him.  
“What are you all doing here?” He asked.  
“We came to find you,” Sungyeol answered. “Are you okay?”  
“I’m okay.”  
“You look horrible,” Sungjong said, smoothing Sunggyu’s hair and clothes.  
“Have you eaten?” Hoya asked.  
“Why didn’t you call us?” Dongwoo asked with a wide smile. “You just called your other friend and not us?”  
Sunggyu softened at Dongwoo’s smile and chuckled a little bit. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, guys. I wasn’t thinking right. I’m sorry you had to come find me.”  
Dongwoo laughed, tousling Sunggyu’s hair.  
“Hyung, what happened to your hand?” Hoya asked.  
Sunggyu looked startled at the question. He looked down at his poorly wrapped hand before hiding it behind his back. “Nothing, Hoya,” he stuttered. “I’m okay.”  
“Can you check out now? We should get you home,” he said. Woohyun shot him a look that he shouldn’t have said that, but Hoya ignored it. They were so close to safety, to getting out and getting home, safe and sound.  
The woman’s voice rang behind them. “I’m sorry,” she said. Hoya turned to look at her, sitting smugly behind the desk. “I’m afraid the last train runs at nine. You won’t be able to make it there in time. It would be better if you stayed the night. Here’s the keys to your rooms.”  
“We have a lot to talk about anyway,” Woohyun said.  
Sungjong and Hoya exchanged hopeless looks before each taking a key from the woman and ushering the others up the stairs.  
Sunggyu followed them to their rooms shyly, unable to part from Woohyun’s grip on him. They were down the hall from Sunggyu’s room. They decided Hoya, Dongwoo, and Woohyun would stay in the room across the hall, and Sungjong would share a room with Sungyeol and Myungsoo. Hoya checked his room before waving them all in.  
They all found spots quietly, and looked at each other, waiting for somebody else to start the conversation none of them wanted to have. Woohyun opened his mouth a couple times without saying anything.  
Dongwoo spoke first. “Let’s take a look at your hand,” he said tactfully, grabbing Sunggyu’s hand and unwrapping it.  
Sungyeol laughed. “You can be so sloppy.”  
“Like you’re one to talk,” Sunggyu said with a soft laugh back.  
“Is it okay?” Dongwoo asked, inspecting it. “What did you do?”  
His hand twitched at the question, and he nearly pulled away from him. Dongwoo looked up at him. “I,” he stuttered, “I broke the mirror in my bathroom earlier. I think I got all of the glass out of my hand.”  
“Looks like it,” he agreed, rewrapping it.  
“Well, look,” Sungyeol began. “It’s been a long day, right? Maybe we should all get some rest and talk in the morning.”  
“I’m tired, too,” Myungsoo agreed. Being in the room with Sunggyu was nearly suffocating with tension, and he wanted a way out. “Let’s all go to bed.”  
“Goodnight, Hyung,” Sungjong said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”  
Sunggyu waved to them as they left for their room. He waited a few minutes, trying to think of a way to begin explaining himself.  
Woohyun opened his mouth again, but Dongwoo spoke up instead.  
“Hyung, are you tired? There must be a lot of things you want to say and that we want to say, too, but I think we should just sleep tonight and talk in the morning.”  
Sunggyu pried his arms away from Woohyun. “You guys must be tired too,” he said, and slipped out of the room.  
“Hyung?” Woohyun scowled.  
“Stop it, Woohyun,” Hoya said. “What do you think was going to happen?”  
“We know he’s safe now, at least,” Dongwoo said in agreement, climbing in to the bed.  
Hoya gestured to Dongwoo. “See? Sunggyu hyung is okay for now. If you start attacking him with questions, it won’t end well.”  
“You have to be delicate with things like this, Woohyun,” Dongwoo said sleepily. “Just have a worry free night for now.”  
Woohyun submitted reluctantly and lay down next to Dongwoo. Hoya sat in a chair until Dongwoo was asleep and Woohyun stopped seething and started browsing his phone.  
“Hey,” he whispered, “I’m going to talk to the others, okay?”  
Woohyun nodded, and Hoya went across the hall. Sungjong let him in. Myungsoo was in bed, half asleep. Sungyeol was watching videos on his phone with Sungjong.  
“How are you guys?” Hoya asked.  
“We’re okay. How’s Sunggyu Hyung?”  
He shrugged. “He went to his room by himself. I thought it would be too much for us all to demand an explanation. He’s probably still hurting because of his sister.”  
Myungsoo sat up at the mention of her. “Isn’t this place weird? Why is he in a place like this anyway?”  
“You noticed too, Hyung?”  
Sungyeol laughed. “I think Woohyun and Dongwoo hyung are the only ones that haven’t noticed.”  
Hoya nodded in agreement and sat down next to Myungsoo. “I don’t know. I hope we can leave tomorrow morning and go back home. Woohyun wants to make everything difficult and confront Hyung about everything.”  
“And he punched the mirror? What’s up with that?” Sungjong added.  
“Who knows?”  
“Hyung’s going through a lot. We wasted all our energy on him, so it kept us from thinking too much about her, you know?” Myungsoo said, lying back down.  
“I guess so.” Sungjong pouted.  
“And do you really think Woohyun is going to sit quietly while Hyung is just next door?” Sungyeol said through a laugh.  
Hoya chuckled, bringing his fingers to his lips. “Of course not. But this spares Sunggyu Hyung from having to answer all of us.”  
“How long do you think he’s been here?” Sungjong asked. “He looks terrible.”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Is Myungsoo asleep?”  
“I think so.”  
They three laughed quietly and Sungyeol covered him up. They talked quietly among themselves until they fell asleep, finally relaxed, finally knowing that Sunggyu was safe and they would be on their way home soon.  
Across the hall, Woohyun slipped out of his room and knocked quietly on Sunggyu’s door. He’d waited as long as he could, but he couldn’t stand not knowing Sunggyu’s excuses for not confiding in him.  
Sunggyu opened the door.  
“Hyung, we need to talk.”  
“I know,” he said, his eyes avoiding Woohyun.  
Woohyun pushed his way past Sunggyu, in to his room. “You must be angry, right?” Sunggyu asked, closing the door and moving to his bed.  
Woohyun opened his mouth to talk, but stopped short.  
Sunggyu raised a brow.  
“I,” he stuttered, “I am mad.”  
“Well let me have it.”  
Woohyun sighed and ruffled his own hair, frustrated at his lack of ability to articulate what he wanted to say. Sunggyu waited patiently, watching Woohyun pace around his room, waving his arms, starting to speak and then stopping again.  
“Woohyun,” Sunggyu began finally. “You know this isn’t about you, right? That it has nothing to do with you?”  
Woohyun sat down on the opposite side of the bed, facing away from Sunggyu.  
“I wasn’t running from you or any of you guys. Even though,” he said, voice fading the longer he talked, “even though it was her that died, I’ve only been thinking of myself this whole time. What do I do without her?”  
Woohyun didn’t answer, and Sunggyu didn’t turn to look at him.  
“I didn’t think to call you. When I try to think about it, I can’t think of what was going through my head.” Sunggyu covered his face with his hands and tried to laugh past his fingers. “I don’t even know what day it is anymore. It feels like the last couple days lasted forever, but it feels so long ago already. It’s like a dream. It feels like I only just woke up when I saw you all.”  
Woohyun was quiet as he tried to swallow Sunggyu’s words. He wanted to tell him he wished he could have done anything for him now that she was gone, but he knew there was nothing he could do now. Everything was retrospective now. “You know you could have stayed with me, right? You could have come to me.”  
“I saved up enough to put a down payment on an apartment,” Sunggyu said. “I was going to tell you then.”  
“It doesn’t do any good after it you already fixed it, does it?” Woohyun bit his tongue, tried not to shout. Hoya was just across the hall, and he knew Hoya would be mad if he woke up because he was yelling at Sunggyu.  
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Sunggyu turned finally, a wry smile on his face. “’Oh, Woohyun ,oh, I’m in trouble, help me’? Yeah, right. How hard do you think it was for me to get kicked out of my apartment? Do you have any idea how hard I tried to convince him to let me stay? Or how hard I tried to get my sister to go stay with anybody else?”  
“So what?”  
“So I was embarrassed!” Sunggyu brought his hands down on the bed and stood up. “I couldn’t help her! Do you think I deserved the help of anybody else? I even sold my phone to try and get enough money fast enough so she wouldn’t have to live on the streets.”  
Woohyun watched him as his burst of frustration subsided to sadness.  
“She wouldn’t leave me,” he said, shoulders and hands falling. “She wouldn’t leave.”  
He watched, unable to say anything again.  
“And then she left.” Sunggyu sat down again, slowly, eyes fixated on the corner of the room. “And she’s never coming back to me.” He spoke softly, without revelation, but with a reluctant acceptance.  
He turned slowly to Woohyun again.  
“What am I going to do without her?”  
“You’ll be okay, hyung. We’re all here for you, you know.”  
Sunggyu patted Woohyun on the shoulder without saying anything. “Thanks, but,” he said, eyes slowly moving upwards to see Woohyun next to him, “it isn’t the same as having her back.”  
There was a knock on the door before Woohyun could say anything else. Sunggyu spun around in his seat to look at the door before it occurred to him to open it. He moved hesitantly, Woohyun noticed, as he rose. He turned the knob slowly, and opened the door a crack, his body blocking Woohyun’s view to the hallway, ready to slam it shut with everything he had if need be. He opened it widely, and Sungyeol stepped in to the room.  
“Hyung, are you okay?” He asked, looking back and forth between Woohyun and Sunggyu. “Did you two fight? I heard someone yell.”  
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?” Sunggyu asked.  
Sungyeol shrugged. “Myungsoo got up a little while ago. I heard you yell so I thought I’d come check on you.”  
“Myungsoo did?”  
“Weird, right?” Sungyeol said, sitting down next to Woohyun and hitting him in the arm. “Hoya said he knew you’d come see Hyung in the middle of the night,” he said with a laugh. “I hope you two didn’t argue too much.”  
“Shut up.”  
Sungyeol laughed, and looked around Sunggyu’s room. His eyes caught the broken mirror in the bathroom, and wandered back to Sunggyu. “I’m glad you’re okay, Hyung. Let’s all go home together, okay?”  
The word home hit Sunggyu like a punch in the gut. It left Sunggyu with a wrenching, longing feeling when Sungyeol said it. He didn’t know where home was. Did they?  
“Okay,” Sunggyu said. “Let’s get some rest and leave first thing in the morning, okay?”


	8. Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I redid this entire chapter, so if you happened to catch the version I had posted before this, please disregard it.  
> Sorry again for the delay at getting this posted.

Hoya woke up early with a sudden inhale, a sudden realization that he’d fallen asleep in the chair in Sungjong’s room. He sat still, trying to orient himself and catch his breath. Where was he? Where was everybody else?  
Were they still in danger?  
He sat up straight and stretched, craning his neck to see where everybody was. Myungsoo was in bed next to Sungjong. And Sungyeol?  
Adrenaline rushed through him as he jumped out of the chair, checked the bathroom, then rushed out to the hall. He knocked on Sunggyu’s door hard, tried not to panic.  
When there was no answer, he knocked again with a heavy fist.  
“Hyung?”  
There was a soft click from the lock, and the door creaked open just enough for Sunggyu to look out with dark eyes, his whole body tensed and blocking the door.  
“Hyung,” Hoya repeated softly, his voice losing inflection as relief washed over him briefly. Sunggyu softened as well, and opened the door wide to welcome him in as he tried rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up and ease his growing migraine. Hoya stepped in, eyes falling immediately to the bed.  
Woohyun and Sungyeol were rousing, sitting themselves up and murmuring questions about why Hoya was always so active and noisy.  
“What’s going on?” Sunggyu asked, running a hand nervously through his hair. The hair on the back of his neck and on his arms was prickling. He recognized this feeling. It was the same feeling he had the last time he met Woohyun, right before he heard the news about his sister. “What’s wrong?”  
Hoya turned and looked at him, their eyes meeting briefly before they both ran out of the room next door. He paled as he shoved the key in the lock to his room and threw the door open.  
“Dongwoo?” Sunggyu shouted, his voice unintentionally rising as he paced in to the room, searching the wardrobe and the bathroom as he did. Hoya followed, re-searched, and searched again before looking at Sunggyu with an open mouth. Guilt burst in his chest as Sunggyu looked back at him, each of them trying to rationalize the panic creeping in to their heads.  
Sunggyu took Hoya by the shoulder, squeezing gently and reassuringly, and they walked back in to the hall, where everybody was waiting worriedly.  
“What’s going on?” Sungyeol asked.  
“Dongwoo isn’t in his room,” Sunggyu answered. “He has to be around here somewhere. Let’s find him and get out of here.”  
Myungsoo watched Sunggyu as he spoke, bit his lip as he thought. Sungjong spoke next to him, but he didn’t hear him. Hoya mentioned splitting up to find him quickly, that this place gave him a bad feeling. It wasn’t safe. Everybody else murmured agreements, except for Sungyeol, who agreed loudly, but added that splitting up was a bad idea.  
“Did you ask the receptionist?” Myungsoo said suddenly.  
Sunggyu looked at him. “What? Do you really trust her to tell you the truth?”  
“I’ll go ask her,” he said, only barely matching gazes with Sunggyu before he looked away, taking long strides away from them, down the hall.  
“Hey, Myungsoo!” Woohyun shouted.  
“Woohyun,” Sungyeol said past a breathy laugh, hitting his arm lightly. “Calm down. What are you getting so mad for? I’ll go with him, alright?”  
Woohyun shot a glare at him, and Sungyeol smiled in response, taking a few steps backwards.  
“We’ll be right back,” he said assuringly, and Sunggyu watched him spin around to run down the hall, rounding the corner just a few steps behind Myungsoo, their footsteps and voice fading as they got farther and farther away from him, dread seeping in to his skin as silence did.  
“Hyung?”  
Sunggyu looked over at Sungjong.  
“What’s the matter?”  
“We need to look for Dongwoo. The whole time I’ve been here, she’s the only other person I’ve seen until you guys. I don’t trust her. I doubt she’ll say she’s seen him, or if she does, that she’ll be telling the truth,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.  
“So what should we do? Where should we go?” Hoya was stretching as he asked, needing to do something with his body. Inactivity would kill him in this situation, and the movement kept his mind from wandering to worst-case scenarios.  
“Should we start from the top, and make our way down?”  
Sunggyu opened his eyes and sighed. “Someone should to wait here for Myungsoo and Sungyeol.”  
“You’ve been through a lot already, Hyung,” Sungjong said, patting him on the arm. “Why don’t you just wait here?”  
The idea of sitting still while he could be helping killed him. He didn’t think he could handle just sitting, just waiting, while somebody else he cared about could leave him forever. Dread and fear were compounding with nausea, and it was growing unbearable. All he could think about was how sick he felt, how much he wished things hadn’t turned out this way, how he needed to do something, _anything_ to help the people who looked so hard for him and worried so much. They were all leaving him, one by one, and he could do nothing but watch, and it was all his fault for running away to begin with.  
“Hyung.”  
Woohyun’s hand was on his arm.  
Sunggyu gasped and pulled away, looking at Woohyun like he’d forgotten he was there.  
“Hyung, I’ll stay here and wait for them,” he said, his hand slowly dropping to his side. “We’ll come find you guys or call if they find out where he is, okay?”  
Hoya rose a brow. “Are you sure, Woohyun?”  
“Hyung doesn’t have a phone,” he said past a laugh. “We can’t leave him alone. I’ll wait for them, and we’ll find Dongwoo hyung in no time.”  
“Thank you, Woohyun,” Sunggyu said, patting him on the arm. He took a few steps back, towards the stairs, with Hoya and Sungjong next to him. “Keep the door closed until you’re sure it’s them, alright?”  
“What?”  
“Please just do it.” Sunggyu shot Woohyun one last look before opening the door to the stairwell and disappearing through it.


	9. Separated

“How many floors is the building?” Hoya asked, quickly taking the lead and jogging up the stairs. His voice echoed back at him.  
“Three or four, not counting the parking garage,” Sunggyu answered. “I stayed in my room the whole time I’ve been here, so I’m not sure.”  
They went up the stairs until they reached the top floor.  
They walked through the halls, knocking on doors, checking the unlocked ones. Sunggyu ran his fingers along the walls as they walked, diligently listening for any sign that they weren’t alone on the floor, trying not to think of the implications that they were, in fact, alone in the hotel. He tried not to jump every time he passed a mirror without realizing it, seeing himself, paranoia growing in him like a ringing in his ears.  
What was it about this place that made it seem like it was somebody else looking back at him?  
Hoya started to talk next to him, and Sunggyu focused on his voice and his image.  
“Was the hall this long?” He asked, looking back behind them.  
Sunggyu could tell just by a glance how determined Hoya was. Hoya walked with his shoulders squared, his hands balled in to fists. He’d been right all along, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going home with everybody.  
He paused, cocked his head. “Did we turn a corner?”  
Sungjong looked at him before looking back behind them. “No,” he answered slowly, turning his head again. “We didn’t, right? Why have we been walking so long?”  
Sunggyu swallowed hard. He put a hand on Hoya’s shoulder. “We need to keep looking, right? I have a bad feeling. Let’s keep moving.”  
“Should we try finding the roof?” Sungjong asked, following Sunggyu and Hoya as they continued down the hall.  
“You don’t think we would have found it by now?” Hoya muttered under his breath.  
“Was this place always this big?” Sungjong asked, eyes wandering, back down the hall, in to the mirrors, up the walls, and to the ceiling. It didn’t look the same as he thought it did, now that he was really looking at it. Weren’t there only four halls? How long had they been walking?  
He made the conscious observation as they rounded a corner, and ran face first in to Hoya’s back.  
“Run,” he said, backing up, pushing Sunggyu and Sungjong with him. “Run.”  
The owner of the hotel was at the end of the hall, in front of a door, approaching them slowly, with a small hatchet in her hands.  
“Run!” Hoya turned around, wrapping one arm around Sunggyu and pushing Sungjong with the other.  
“Hoya, the door!” Sunggyu shouted, trying to get past his grip.  
“Hyung, just run!” He yelled, pushing them back the way they came, back around the corner, to the stairs, to an empty room, to anywhere away from the woman, each of them with breath and screams caught in their throats as their minds screamed at their legs to move and run. They tripped on their own feet as they ran, too scared to turn their heads from their goal, too scared to think of the possibilities if they were caught, feeling the woman’s eyes on them through each mirror they passed, behind them, next to them, unable to get far away enough.  
Hoya lost track of how many corners they turned, what hall they were in. He slowed once he started to recognize the décor as a place they’d been before. A statue there, a plant down there, a certain hook in the wall.  
He had a plan.  
Hoya threw open one of the doors of one of the unlocked rooms and shoved Sunggyu and Sungjong as hard as he could in to the room. Sunggyu stumbled, his legs weak from running for so long, for not taking care of himself, and fell in to the room, barely catching himself with his hands.  
His eyes shot up to see Sungjong, running over to Hoya, and Hoya lying a hand on him to stop him.  
“Stay here for a while. She won’t know. I’ll keep running, get her away from you guys. Find Dongwoo hyung if you can.”  
“What about you?”  
“I’ll be fine. Lock the door after me, okay? Trust me,” he said, and shut the door, and was gone before Sunggyu could get himself back up.  
His legs and lungs were on fire, but the disappointment he felt in himself was even worse. The fear for himself and for his friends was bad, but guilt was overwhelming everything within him.  
Sungjong spun around to Sunggyu, looking for a cue for what to do.  
Sunggyu stayed still, his eyes on the door where Hoya was, all thoughts silent beneath the rage of emotions he was feeling.  
Sungjong locked the door and sat next to it, listening hard for any footsteps that might pass by once Hoya’s disappeared. He kept his eyes on Sunggyu, unmoving except for his shallow breathing. He tried not to think of what could happen, what has happened to his hyungs. His breath hitched when he heard, slow, deliberate, heeled footsteps. Hoya hyung would be okay, wouldn’t he?  
The sharp echoes of heels on wood slowed, stopped.  
Sungjong suddenly thought that in front of the door wasn’t the safest place to be, but was terrified to move in case he made any noise. Sunggyu stared at him, quietly shifted, and leaned forward to take Sungjong’s hand, slowly pulling him away from the door, gesturing him to shush with his free hand.  
They watched and listened hard, Sunggyu silently clutching Sungjong’s hand, ready to shove him out of harm’s way, ready to throw Sungjong behind him if that hatchet came through the face of the door.  
The footsteps continued, slowly, past their door. They gained the courage to breathe again, but didn’t move until the footsteps had faded down the hall, after their friend.  
“What should we do, Hyung?”  
Sunggyu stood up, pulling Sungjong along with him. “Let’s go see what was behind that door, if we can find it. I have a feeling about it.”  
“What about Hoya hyung?”  
“I trust him. He’ll be okay. We’ll find Dongwoo, we’ll get Hoya and everybody else, and we’ll get the hell out of here,” Sunggyu was saying, making his way over to the door. He cracked it open, ready to slam it shut, and peeked out. He looked up and down the halls, listening, looking. “Let’s go,” he said.  
Sungjong followed him down the hall, both constantly looking over their shoulders, afraid to say anything to one another. They walked slowly, taking the softest steps they could down the halls, around corners, their fingers running along the walls to remind them this was all real.  
They twisted and turned, losing track of where anything was, whether or not they’d gone down this hall or not, what they were looking for. Sunggyu could feel his migraine growing as he walked, could feel the migraine down his neck and in his lungs when he took too deep a breath. He kept Sungjong close behind him, ignoring the claustrophobia of being so close and lost in endless halls.  
“What’s the way to beat a maze? Stick to one wall?” Sunggyu asked. He cocked his head. “I think I read that once.”  
“I don’t know,” Sungjong said absently behind him.  
Sunggyu ran his fingers along the wall, tried to focus on the bumpy, cool texture of them to distract him from the pain in his head and body.  
They kept to one wall as best they could, carefully and quietly checking doors and rooms if they were unlocked. They turned a corner and stopped.  
The hallway forked. The way straight ahead of them ended in a mirror, and the other two forks ended in doorways that led down their own halls.  
“Which way should we go?” Sungjong asked.  
Sunggyu cocked his head, ran a hand through his hair.  
“I don’t know.” He looked behind them, then back at the options laid out in front of them. “This doesn’t make sense, right?”  
“No, it doesn’t.”  
“I thought so.” Sunggyu sighed. “I’m getting confused.”  
“Me too, hyung.” Sungjong leaned against the door on the right, and Sunggyu leaned on the wall across from him, bracing himself against it. “Is that the point?”  
“Maybe.”  
They both stiffened as the brief silence between them was interrupted by a soft, even thud. The sound of heels on carpeted wood. They exchanged glances, each standing up straight, looking frantically for an escape route.  
A shadow was cast on the wall from the way they came, and the woman followed shortly, her shoulders square, her eyes focused, and the weapon still in her hands. She came at them quickly, swinging with her whole body at Sunggyu.  
“Hyung!”  
Sunggyu pressed himself up against the left door, stared at the woman inches in front of him as she breathed hard, straightened up to look at him with bright-colored eyes. He looked up at Sungjong, three feet away from him.  
When he moved, it was quickly and instinctively.  
He grabbed ahold of the woman before she could stand up straight, grabbing ahold of the wooden handle over her fingers, twisting inwards, towards her thumb.  
“Sungjong, run!” He yelled.  
“What about you?” Sungjong screamed back, eyes wide as he watched Sunggyu wrestle with the woman in front of him, unsure of how to help.  
He had the axe.  
“Run!!”  
He threw it back down the hall they came from, the woman fighting back, trying to grab it before it went flying down the hall. She spun back with her fists, getting Sunggyu in the face. Sunggyu tried to block her after that, dodging, catching her smaller hands in his when he could.  
She was between them.  
She was keeping them apart, as best she could. And she was doing well. She had Sunggyu against the wall, desperately trying to get around her and failing, desperately trying to avoid hitting her, and avoid being hit by her.  
He grabbed the door handle, twisted, and fell backwards through the doorway with her. She landed on top of him, and he grabbed on to her.  
“Sungjong, go!!”  
He watched Sungjong hesitate in slow motion, darkness creeping in to his vision. He took a step forward, ready to jump in to the fray, to help Sunggyu fight, but Sunggyu waved him away, the weight on his chest suddenly not as heavy as it was before. Sungjong’s jaw fell. Did he shout? Sunggyu grabbed on to the woman again, held her back.  
Sungjong turned, swung the door open, and ran, slamming the door behind him.  
The woman looked back at Sunggyu, digging her knees in to his stomach. She grabbed him by the collar.  
She opened her mouth, but all that Sunggyu heard was blood rushing through his ears. She lifted him by his shirt, and slammed his head back in to the ground. He saw the woman stand through flashes in front of his eyes, through the darkness seeping in to his vision. He shouted at himself to get up, to grab on to her, to stop her.  
He didn’t recognize the absence of feeling or the absence of sight as he slipped in to unconsciousness.


	10. Closed and Opened

Hoya was careful.  
He made sure there was enough distance between them and the woman before he made his move. He knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what he was getting himself in to. He wanted to run with Sunggyu and Sungjong, but he knew it was impossible.  
Sunggyu was in such bad shape, and he wouldn’t be able to keep running for much longer. Hoya wondered how much he’d eaten, if he’d been drinking enough water, in the past couple days. How long had he run, already?  
He wanted Sunggyu to be safe.  
He’d been through enough already.  
So, once he realized where they were, and they were far enough away from the woman for him to do this without her realizing, at least for a while, he shoved them in to an empty room as hard as he could. Sunggyu fell right away, breathing hard, his eyes wide open as he looked up at Hoya. Sungjong tried to pull him in with them before he understood what was happening.  
“Stay here for a while,” he said to Sungjong. “She won’t know. I’ll keep running, get her away from you guys. Find Dongwoo hyung if you can.”  
“What about you?” He asked.  
“I’ll be fine. Lock the door after me, okay?” He said. Sungjong grabbed at him one last time, silently begging him not to split up, not to leave them. Hoya slipped his hand out of Sungjong’s and pat him on the shoulder, gesturing at Sunggyu with his face as he struggled to get up.  
He saw in Sungjong’s face that he understood. He’d take care of Sunggyu. Hoya knew he had to trust that.  
He left the room before Sunggyu could try to stop him, and ran down the hall until he turned a corner. Hoya waited until he heard the woman, peeked around the corner, and drew her attention away from the room when she stopped. He slowed his pace so that she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to swing at him, to chase him around the halls until he was lost again.  
It didn’t matter if she knew where Sunggyu and Sungjong were right now. They would move soon, and they would be safe.  
Hoya picked up his pace after a while, enough to shake the woman. He wandered around slowly, quietly, trying to make sure he was safe. It was hard to lose someone following you, but easy to lose track of where you were, he thought, trying to even his breathing and take in every detail of the hotel.  
He felt safe enough to head down the stairs. He opened the door quietly and slid through it, stepped down the stairs without echoes, and went back to the second floor. He headed to Sunggyu’s room. He had to check on the others, to warn them.  
“Hyung?”  
Hoya spun around at the voice. “Myungsoo?”  
Myungsoo jogged up to him as he tried to catch his breath.  
Hoya met him halfway, catching him by the shoulders. “Myungsoo, what happened? Where’s Sungyeol?”  
He shook his head.  
Worry hit him like an ice bath.  
“What happened?”  
“I don’t know,” he said. “The woman. She came at us with an ax or something and we started running. I must have lost Sungyeol hyung at some point.”  
“Is he okay?”  
“I don’t know,” he answered, avoiding looking up. “I don’t know, hyung.” He shook his head again, grabbing on to Hoya’s arms.  
“We have to find him,” he decided. “I left Sunggyu hyung with Sungjong. That woman’s running around, though…” his eyes wandered and his arms dropped as he started to try to form a plan. “We should get Woohyun.”  
“Where is he?” Myungsoo asked.  
Hoya’s mind froze.  
“What?”  
Myungsoo took a deep breath as he realized the situation.  
Hoya hit him in the chest. “What is it?”  
“He,” he stuttered, “he wasn’t in the room. I assumed he was with you.”  
“He wasn’t in any of them?” Hoya clarified.  
Myungsoo shook his head again.  
Hoya swore and swung his foot in to the wall. “Damn it. We have to find them,” he muttered, swearing again to himself.  
“Calm down, Hyung,” Myungsoo chided, grabbing again on to Hoya’s arm.  
“Damn it.”  
Myungsoo pulled him away from the wall as he spoke, “calm down. If you’re too noisy, she’ll find out where we are.”  
Good, Hoya thought smugly. He wanted to meet her, face to face. No more running.  
He wanted to fight.  
“No,” Myungsoo said, shaking his head. He knew what Hoya was thinking. It was a bad idea, as good as it sounded. They couldn’t win, and they knew it was too dangerous when she was armed and reckless. She had nothing to lose, and they had already lost so much. “Stop it,” he said. “Let’s go find everyone else, okay?”  
Hoya rolled his shoulders and pulled his arm out of Myungsoo’s hand. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”  
“I think Sungyeol hyung got lost back this way,” he said. He took the lead, and Hoya followed instinctively, talking himself in to calming down. He needed to be alert when they found whatever it was that was making his skin prickle. He needed to focus.  
Myungsoo kept Hoya close as he got lost in thought.  
He took him through the winding halls of the lower floors, down a set of stairs, and in to the hotel lobby. Hoya’s eyes strayed from in front of him as he got distracted by the outside. The sun was a bright, firey yellow outside.  
“Hey, Myungsoo,” Hoya began. Was it that late already? He stopped as he turned his head back in front of him. He spun around. “Myungsoo? Where did you go?”  
The lobby was empty except for him, and he had the thought to leave while he could. He stretched his neck as he surveyed the lobby, looking in to every damn mirror in the place. What was it that had made Sunggyu hyung break the mirror in his bedroom, anyway? Was he just being crazy? Was there something more?  
He raised his fist.  
Myungsoo flashed in the mirror.  
Hoya spun around and followed him around the corner.  
“Hey,” he started, ready to scold him. He stopped as he caught up to him, standing in the middle of a dark and otherwise empty room. He was focused on something Hoya couldn’t see from the doorway, and every muscle in his body was screaming to leave, to run as far away from this place as he could.  
He watched Myungsoo as he stepped out of his field of vision.  
He couldn’t just leave him.  
Hoya stepped in to the room on light feet and sweating, looking for whatever it was that was putting him on edge. There was a table on one wall, but no bed and no windows. Just dirty mirrors, spotty with dust, reflecting his own terrified image back at him.  
“Hyung,” Myungsoo said from the bathroom.  
“What is it?” Hoya asked, glancing back at the door and around the room. Myungsoo came out to meet him, covering his mouth. “What?”  
He shook his head and stepped away from the doorway. Hoya looked between Myungsoo’s back and the flickering light from the bathroom. He heard Myungsoo try to steady his breathing.  
Hoya stepped in to the bathroom and looked around.  
What was it?  
The door closed.  
Hoya was at it a second too late, trying to pull the door open. “Myungsoo!” He shouted, punching and kicking the door. “Hey, Myungsoo! Myungsoo! What do you think you’re doing? Let me out of here! What are you doing? Hey! Myungsoo!”  
He could barely hear Myungsoo’s voice through the door. “Be quiet, Hyung! She’ll hear you. You need to calm down.”  
“Calm down? Calm down, Myungsoo?” He growled.  
“Please trust me,” he said. “I’ll take care of everyone. Just wait here, okay?”  
“Myungsoo, I’ll break this door down!”  
“Stop it, Hyung. She’ll find you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”  
Hoya put his ear to the door. Footsteps?  
No. No.  
“Myungsoo, stop. Myungsoo, don’t leave!”  
“I’m so sorry, Hyung.”  
“Myungsoo!”  
It was quiet.  
“Myungsoo!”  
Still quiet. He tried the door knob again, and hit the door until his knuckles started to bleed.  
“Damn it.” Hoya closed his eyes, resting his head on the door until he’d calmed down enough to try to think a way out of his situation. The lights were still flickering when he’d opened them, and the pain in his hands kept him focused. He was still alive. He breathed deeply, and turned around to see his reflection in the mirror.

* * *

Sungjong tried to keep himself from trembling.  
What had he done?  
He listened to his hyung and ran away while he was in danger. Why did he think Sunggyu hyung could handle it on his own? Why did he think he couldn’t?  
He wringed his hands together as he jogged down the stairs.  
Had he condemned Sunggyu to death by leaving him?  
Sungjong shook his head and paused, his legs nearly collapsing beneath him. He held his head in his hands and sat in a corner, trying to calm himself down enough to think of a plan. He waited until his own self destructive thoughts passed and his breathing steadied, and he raised his head to look around.  
Hadn’t the woman followed him?  
“Why did you have to close the door?” He murmured, pushing himself up. “So stupid.”  
He ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t stupid. Sunggyu hyung was stronger than he was, he knew that. Sunggyu hyung could fight the woman (even in as bad a state as he was), but not quite win. He could win, with help. (Could have, if he hadn’t run away before.)  
He could help Sunggyu, still.  
Sungjong ran down the stairwell, back to their rooms. He threw open the doors.  
“Hyung!”  
The rooms were empty.  
“Woohyun hyung!! Hyung?”  
All three of them were empty.  
Something was wrong. Something was even more wrong than he’d thought. He needed to go back to Sunggyu. He didn’t have time to waste.  
Sungjong stepped in to the hallway.  
_Thunk._  
He looked down the hall as the owner stood in the doorway of the stairwell.  
She started towards him, and he ran. He lost her quickly, but the more he tried to circle the hotel and find his way back to the stairs, the more he ran in to her.  
Now that he was alone, he could focus. He was worried about everybody else, of course, but he didn’t have to watch out for them while he was on his own. Sungjong slipped easily through doorways and hallways, keeping track of exactly where he was, exactly where he was trying to go.  
He made it to the top floor, where he’d left Sunggyu.  
He knew where the roof was. He knew where Sunggyu would have been.  
He wasn’t worried.  
There was no blood on the carpet or the walls.  
There had been no blood on her axe.  
As far as Sungjong figured, Sunggyu was alive.  
But why wouldn’t the woman let him get close to where he’d left him? She was afraid of them teaming up. They’d separated from the beginning, and that was the mistake that Sungyeol hyung had tried to avoid. Something was wrong, but Sunggyu hyung was alive for now. And he was here, somewhere.  
He met the woman again, and spun around and ran until he lost her.  
This same hallway again.  
He was always trying to get around this hallway, back to where he was. He wasn’t stupid.  
He was being corralled.  
There was a door at the end of the hall that he hadn’t gone through yet.  
It was the door he thought would go to the roof. It was the only place he hadn’t been on this floor, as far as he could tell. Fear was the only thing keeping him from opening the door and going through. Curiosity was starting to get the best of him.  
Was Dongwoo hyung there? Or Sunggyu hyung? What was it that she wanted for him to see so badly?  
He heard the woman’s footsteps coming towards him slowly.  
It was time to find out.  
He couldn’t fight the woman, but he would handle what was behind the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys the new video is so good ಥ⌣ಥ


	11. Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, everybody!

Sunggyu only got up when the pain in his head woke him. The pain came to him slowly as he roused, his throbbing brain threatening to burst from his temples and spill on the carpet. The harsh light when he opened his eyes didn’t help.  
He rolled over on to his stomach before pushing himself up slowly, whispering words of encouragement to himself as he did. He touched the back of his head, and ran his hands over his body. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” he told himself. He gained the sense to look around and wonder where he was as his body ran itself through the motions, making sure nothing was broken or bruised too badly. Where was he? What was he doing?  
“The last thing you remember?” he asked himself.  
His sister was dead. (This realization came all the time now. Maybe soon it would fade in to fact, instead of a sad reminder.) He’d run away from home. (Whatever “home” was.) He didn’t know where he was now. Woohyun was mad at him. Dongwoo was missing. Hoya. The woman. She had an axe.  
Oh no.  
“Sungjong!”  
Panic ran through him as he realized that he was still alive.  
Everybody else was still in danger.  
He spun around to start his search, but faltered. He flinched at the pain in his head and the bright purple flashes that came along with them. He caught himself on the wall with one hand, covering his eyes with the other.  
“Hyung? Are you okay?”  
His head snapped up. “Dongwoo?”  
He rubbed his neck roughly as he looked around the hallway, his legs carrying him halfway down the hall.  
“Dongwoo? Are you here?”  
It was just a brief second, but Dongwoo’s voice had been clear in his ears. He started checking the rooms around him, running his hand along the walls of the hotel and using his fingers to make a mark on any mirror he passed, to make sure he wasn’t going in circles. Sunggyu flexed and unflexed his hand as he walked. It hurt and stung just enough to relieve the pain in his head and keep him going. He had to find somebody. But every time he blinked, he saw flashes of light, of purple and blue engulfing the hallways. It was getting painful just to blink.  
Sunggyu caught himself on the wall as his legs gave way.  
“Hyung!”  
He looked up.  
“Sungyeol?” His voice came out like a wisp on his breath as he looked around, taking in his surroundings. Everything was swathed in purple light. He pushed himself up, away from the wall. He walked slowly, eyes frantically trying to decipher the area. The marks he’d made on the mirror were all still there. “Sungyeol? Where are you? Are you okay?”  
He could barely hear his footsteps and his heartbeat over the pain in his head.  
“Hyung, listen to me,” he said. “You had the right idea all along. I’ll leave you an exit, okay?”  
“What are you talking about?” He shouted.  
“Be careful.”  
Sunggyu winced at a sharp noise, a ringing in his right ear. The mirror on the wall next to him was broken and cracked, and fog began to leak in to the hallway from between the cracks. His hand was aching again. It was bleeding now.  
He rubbed his eyes and started searching for Sungyeol. He’d sounded so close before, but now there was no sign of him. Every room he checked was empty, and let more fog in to the hallway, until he could barely see where he was going.  
“Don’t come here, Hyung,” Sungjong said.  
It was hard to see. Hard to breathe.  
“Sungjong? Where are you? Is Sungyeol with you?”  
“She isn’t alone, Hyung,” he said. “Turn around. Go.”  
He could barely hear over his slowing heartbeat. “What?”  
Blood mixed with the smoke. It poured and dripped out of the frames of the mirrors, off the veins of the leaves on the plants. The smell and the thickness of the air made him want to throw up. He couldn’t look, couldn’t stand the sight of it.  
And then Hoya, clear as day: “Run, Hyung,” he said. “Run. Get out.”  
“Hoya?”  
There was no answer.  
Just blood.  
Just smoke.  
Sunggyu craned his neck at the sound of footsteps. There was the hourglass silhouette of a woman walking slowly through the fog.  
He started to run. Everywhere he went he was surrounded. His head hurt. His blood was racing through him, trying to keep him alive and going. His legs hurt. Everything hurt. Everything was gone. He stumbled. He saw his hands fly in front of his eyes as he tried to catch himself. Pain jolted through his hands, up his arms, but just for a second before he moved again.  
Sunggyu scrambled to avoid the blood pooling on the floor, trying to push himself off the ground and the walls. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. It was over.  
_“Hyung!”_  
There was a voice. It was white noise underneath his panic, but it was there. Sunggyu’s eyes darted around the hallway. Who was it, calling for him this time?  
“Hyung, can you hear me?”  
The voice was gaining strength, clarity.  
“Hyung!”  
“Woohyun?”  
“Hyung, get up!”  
“Woohyun!” He shouted. “Where are you?”  
“I’m here, Hyung!”  
Sunggyu gasped. Opened his eyes. Looked around. Breathed. He was in front of the stairwell leading down to his floor. Everything was normal again. No sign of the woman.  
“Woohyun?”  
He wasn’t there, no. But Sunggyu knew where he should be.  
He pushed himself up off the ground and took down the stairs, running to his room, to his friend. The room was waiting with an open door, but nobody else was there to welcome him.  
“Woohyun!” He shouted, searching the room, the bathroom. “Woohyun!”  
He checked Hoya’s room next door, then across the hall in Myungsoo’s room.  
_Oh._  
He stopped dead with realization and shock.  
“Myungsoo,” he whispered.  
His hand throbbed.  
“Hyung.”  
He looked up and turned to face the mirror.  
Myungsoo’s face looked back at him.


	12. Alone

“Myungsoo,” he said again.  
“I’m sorry, Hyung.”  
Sunggyu tried to laugh. “After all this, and that’s the first thing you say to me? You didn’t even greet me when you got here.”  
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry, Hyung.”  
“Myungsoo, don’t do this.” Sunggyu felt his heart swell. He tried to keep his breathing steady and his eyes dry. “Please don’t. Whatever she’s convinced you to do… don’t throw yourself away. I can’t do this alone.”  
“You won’t be alone. Just go.”  
“Myungsoo, stop. Please. I can’t handle this on my own.”  
Myungsoo looked up and smiled. “Don’t cry, Hyung. She’s there waiting for you.”  
Sunggyu shook his head. “I can’t let you do this. I can’t leave everyone.”  
“They’re already gone, Hyung. There’s nothing left for you here.”  
“Don’t do this.”  
Myungsoo hung his head. He still couldn’t stand to look at him, to see her in his face.  
Sunggyu took a step towards the mirror. He smiled. Tried to laugh again to cover up the trembling in his breath. “She really loved you, you know.”  
“Goodbye, Hyung.” And then he stepped out of frame, and was gone.  
Sunggyu stayed still, watching for any other signs of movement, any sign that he wasn’t alone. He swallowed hard, listening for _something_ , but there was nothing to be heard. Reality started to set in, his legs itching and aching to run, to get away from the danger and leave all of this behind.  
The sound of mirrors breaking made him jump.  
The hands slamming in to them, trying to reach through, surrounding him, is what made him take off running. Out the room, down the stairs.  
Don’t look; don’t look.  
Out the way he came in.  
Fear was already in him, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, chased even outside the building.  
There was one last trap. One last way out that Sungyeol had left for him.  
Sunggyu slowed as he approached it, seeing only himself. He had one last chance to go back, to try to save his friends. How could he let Myungsoo do this?  
“How can I live with myself?”  
His reflection didn’t move with him, and instead smiled and turned, leaving him completely by himself, not even a reflection to keep him company.  
-  
He was hydrated enough to cry again.  
He found himself at the shores that started it all, and looked out at them as he tried to process everything that had happened.  
Sunggyu inhaled.  
How many days had it been since everything went wrong? He tried to count, but everything was a blur until now. He felt like he could breathe easy now, like he could finally see clearly. The world was bright with the setting sun around him, and the waves were calm and constant.  
Exhaled. Slowly, steadily. Tried not to cry.  
Was the rest of his life going to be like this?  
He closed his eyes and mentally buried himself in the sand. He slept soundly until the bright light of the rising sun woke him up.  
There was a silhouette blocking part of the light, walking slowly towards him.  
He didn’t care anymore. Couldn’t care anymore. Every ounce of emotion had been squeezed out of him by now. Let her come.  
 _Just fucking kill me already._  
He closed his eyes again, shutting them tightly to block out the light.  
“You’re just going to give up like this?”  
His eyes popped open at the voice.  
“That doesn’t sound like the brother I know.”  
It hurt just to say her name, to hear it spoken out loud as he called out to her.  
She laughed sweetly, and somewhere in the brightness of the light, he felt the sand next to him shift like she was sitting next to him. He couldn’t look.  
He knew that she wasn’t there, next to him. Looking would confirm that and shatter whatever fever dream he was having.  
“You know you can’t leave them, right? I’d hate you forever.”  
Sunggyu shook his head. Don’t look. _Don’t look._  
“Oppa,” she said. (He covered his eyes. He couldn’t keep himself from sobbing. How could he show this to his little sister?) “You know this isn’t right. You have to do something.”  
“What can I do?”  
“What you’ve always done,” she answered. “You’ll make do. Always have.”  
Emotion flooded back to him with a mix of happiness and sadness. He felt everything more than he’d ever felt anything, and it hurt more than his head and his body. “You deserved so much better.”  
“Well, we had each other, Oppa. That was good enough.”  
He looked up, looked at her. She was right next to him, watching the ocean with wet and stringy hair. Was she sad? Was she in pain? Her mouth hung open, like she was grasping for words. (Or for breath.)  
“I love you.”  
He reached out, touched her hand. It was solid and cold in his. Was this how he would remember her now?   
Her fingers squeezed his. “I know.”  
“Please don’t go.” She didn’t answer, and he continued to sob out everything he’d never had the courage to say out loud. “I wanted to give you so much. I wanted to give you everything. How can you ever forgive me for everything I’ve done?”  
“You can fix everything.”  
“I’m so sorry.”  
“I’m glad we could say goodbye.”  
Sunggyu bit his lip.  
“I love you, Oppa. Thank you for everything.”  
He shook his head. Closed his eyes.  
Don’t look.  
She’ll be gone, then.  
“I love you so much.”  
He opened his eyes to see the beach next to him. Inhale. Exhale.  
It wasn’t over yet.  
Sunggyu stood up and headed back to the hotel.


	13. Myungsoo

Normally, sleeping wasn’t a problem. But this hotel was sketchy from the beginning. He thought if he’d had somebody next to him, he would be okay. But Dongwoo woke up to an empty room and the soft sound of rain outside. He rolled over, stretched across the whole bed, since he didn’t have to share, and tried to go back to sleep.  
Time passed slowly, and he couldn’t fall back asleep. He inhaled deeply and sat up, pushed himself off the bed. He might as well exercise, right?  
Dongwoo started to stretch, trying to warm up his body to fend off the goosebumps crawling up his arms and back.  
“Hey, guys? Is there someone else?” He asked out loud. He hated stuff like this. “Guys,” he repeated.  
Nobody answered.  
Dongwoo took careful steps across the room in to the bathroom, flipped the switch. Flipped it again, and again. Unbelieving, Dongwoo rubbed his eyes and tried again, but couldn’t get the lights to turn on. He went back in to the room and tried the switches there, but it stayed dark.  
“Is the power out?”  
That must have been what woke him up, he decided. He would just go back to sleep.  
He crossed the room, but paused at the bed.  
Was that mirror always there?  
Dongwoo turned around slowly, took a few steps towards it.  
No. No, he didn’t like this.  
Was there something in the bed behind him?  
He bit his lip and closed his eyes.  
He felt hands on each of his shoulders (from what direction?), a jerk, and then nothing.

* * *

Myungsoo woke up like somebody had poured cold water on him, with a sudden inhale and panic coursing through him. He bolted upright, checking all around him. Sungyeol was next to him, rousing at Myungsoo’s movement. Hoya and Sungjong were asleep in the chairs.  
“Myungsoo? Are you okay?” Sungyeol whispered sleepily.  
“I’m fine, go back to sleep,” he answered, breathing deeply. He rubbed his eyes and tried to calm himself down. “I have to go to the bathroom.”  
Sungyeol mumbled an incoherent acknowledgement and laid his head back down, and Myungsoo slid out of the bed and in to the bathroom. He closed the door and flipped on the light, mumbling to himself that he needed to go back to sleep, that he was being silly for getting so scared. He leaned down to wash his face, but when he stood back up, it was the woman in the mirror.  
It was violet behind her, but her eyes glowed blue, and the room was different from the one behind him. She pointed to a towel behind him.  
Myungsoo grabbed it and dried his face slowly, never taking his eyes off of her. “What is this?” He asked quietly.  
“You would do anything to get her back, wouldn’t you?”  
He stiffened, tried not to give himself away. He’d never said that out loud, had he?  
“If you help me, you can get her back.” Her voice echoed like there was thousands of her, all of them whispering directly in to his ears.  
“What are you asking?”  
“Give them to me. Give them to me, and I’ll get the girl back for you.” She smiled at him and shifted so Myungsoo could see behind her.  
“Dongwoo hyung!” He didn’t mean to shout, to take a desperate step closer. He could see on her face that she was satisfied, that she had him where she wanted him, and Dongwoo was helpless bait, unconscious on the floor behind her. “What do you think you’re doing? Don’t hurt him or you’ll regret it.”  
“Wouldn’t he do anything to get her back, too?”  
“What did you do to him?”  
“Myungsoo,” she whispered, her voice like ice down his spine, “I will have you all either way. If you agree to help, we can bargain.”  
“You’re crazy.”  
She took a few steps back, watching Myungsoo’s face carefully, and stopped next to Dongwoo. She rolled him on to his back, and picked up a hatchet from a table next to her. She raised her arm, began to swing down, and –  
“Stop! I’ll help! I’ll help you, don’t hurt him!” Myungsoo yelled, his hands on the mirror, trying hard to get through. “I’ll help you if you don’t hurt any of them. I’ll give myself up willingly. I’ll do whatever you want if you give everybody else a chance to get out of this.”  
She looked satisfied.  
“But Sunggyu hyung—” Myungsoo’s heart was beating a thousand beats per minute—“Let Sunggyu hyung go. So he can be with her.”  
“It’s a deal.” Her voice was echoing in his ears, and in between blinks, the bathroom was swathed in violet light, and the woman was next to him. He blinked again and the bathroom was normal, but the woman’s voice still bounced through his mind.  
Myungsoo looked up, back in to the mirror, at himself, at a traitor. He was sorry. For himself. To everybody. To Dongwoo hyung, especially. He was sorry, but he couldn’t let that get in the way of giving happiness to the girl who’d tried so hard to do so for him, to the girl who’d died too young.


	14. Myungsoo (pt. 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

When Myungsoo went stepped back in to the hotel room, Sungyeol was gone.  
Panic ran through him before he’d heard the soft voices of his friends across the hall. Sungyeol laughed languidly, the mix of voices melting in to a warm background as they blended with the sound of rain on the walls. Myungsoo took quiet steps towards Sungjong, curled up in the smaller of the two chairs, and covered in blankets. He gently shook Sungjong awake.  
“You can get in bed,” he said softly.  
He was awake just enough to form parts of sentences. “… Sungyeol hung…?” He murmured.  
“He went to talk to Sunggyu hyung,” he answered. “Get in bed.”  
He helped Sungjong as he moved automatically before processing the information, sleepily struggling to untangle himself. Myungsoo helped him delicately, covering Hoya (in the bigger of the two chairs) with the extra blankets, and then climbing back in to the bed with Sungjong. He listened to the soft voices across the hall, the rain, and the soft sound of his sleeping friends’ breathing, watching Sungjong and Hoya sleep in the purple thunderstorm light that sifted in through the broken blinds of the hotel room, until he fell asleep.  
The woman came to him like that, showing his dreaming eyes images of what he was to do the next day – how exactly he was made to betray and doom his friends. Separate them all. Leave them to her.  
No, he knew. Sungyeol would figure everything out. He was smart. He would know what was going on, how to beat her at her own game. He was cunning, like that.  
Hoya would give her trouble. He was too strong, too fast, too determined. He’d known from the beginning that this would happen, and he’d been preparing for it since they’d first heard news that her ship had gone down.  
I will take care of them, just keep up your end of the bargain.  
Myungsoo woke up with a wave of guilt and sorry determination. His eyes wandered around the room, and he began to breathe easy as he realized that he was alone. He listened to his friends talking out in the hall, their voices tense and nearly frantic. He might never hear their voices again, might never see their stupid faces or their dumb smiles. It all ended today, a voice whispered deep inside him.  
He knew this, understood it. He crawled out of bed and went in to the hall with the others.  
“Dongwoo isn’t in his room,” Sunggyu was saying, “He has to be around here somewhere. Let’s find him and get out of here.”  
Myungsoo watched him as he spoke animatedly past his hollowed cheeks and dark circles. He’d never seen Sunggyu so strung out, never heard his voice so harsh and ragged. He bit his lip to keep himself from saying anything. What was he going to do?  
“Are you okay, Myungsoo hyung?” Sungjong asked.  
“We should split up,” Hoya said. “It’ll be quicker.”  
“Are you kidding me?” Sungyeol cut in. “That’s the worst thing we could possibly do right now.”  
_Ah._ Myungsoo looked at Sungyeol. “Did you ask the receptionist?”  
“What?” Sunggyu looked at him with sharp eyes. “Do you really trust her to tell you the truth?”  
He felt the smallest he’d ever felt, and shrunk at Sunggyu’s sight on him. “I’ll go ask,” he said, and left.  
Woohyun shouted at him, and he ignored it. He couldn’t stand being around Sunggyu, couldn’t stand the sight of him. Why did he have to come here, of all places? He was going to lose everything if he wasn’t more careful.  
Sungyeol followed him, just like he’d thought he would. Just like he knew he would.  
“You have to be more careful,” Sungyeol chided. “You can’t just walk off like that. I know you’re worried, but we don’t know what’s going on here yet.”  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
Sungyeol tried to laugh as he followed Myungsoo. He put an arm around Myungsoo’s shoulders, but he shrugged them off. He followed more closely after that, and became more attentive. Was he worried? Or was he suspicious?  
“Myungsoo?” He began, unsure of how to finish his thoughts.  
Myungsoo paused in his stride as they arrived in the hotel lobby.  
“Why did you think she would know where Dongwoo hyung was?” Sungyeol asked.  
“It’s worth a try, right?” He asked.  
Sungyeol grabbed ahold of his shoulder. “Let’s go back,” he said. “This doesn’t feel right. She’s not even at the desk.”  
“Well, we can at least look for him down here, right?” Myungsoo asked.  
He hesitated, but agreed slowly. “Yeah, I guess so.”  
Myungsoo took the lead, acutely aware of the growing distance between himself and Sungyeol. They searched the first floor at his insistence, goosebumps trickling down his spine every time they passed a mirror hung in the hall, knowing that somewhere in them, the woman was watching, waiting. They started opening doors, and Myungsoo opened them slowly, expecting the woman to come at them at any moment, his whole body ready to jump in front of Sungyeol if he needed to.  
Sungyeol’s hand found Myungsoo’s. “Are you okay?” He asked, pulling Myungsoo back just hard enough to signal him to stop. “You’re acting weird. What’s going on?”  
Myungsoo paused, turning to look at Sungyeol, but not pulling his hand away. There was a mirror behind him, and he could see how helpless he looked in front of it. “You know,” he began. He paused. Inhaled. “You know I would do anything to bring her back, right?”  
Something seemed to click in Sungyeol’s brain, and he quickly stole his hand back. “What are you talking about?”  
He felt her whisper course through him.  
_Now._  
Myungsoo grabbed his arm before he had a chance to run.  
“Myungsoo, what do you think you’re doing?” Sungyeol yelled, slipping his arms out of Myungsoo’s grip as he tried to get a hold of him, trying to run, to shout loud enough for somebody to come help him.  
He pulled, hard, and Sungyeol lost his balance, sending them back in to the room behind them.  
“What are you doing?” He shouted, pinning Myungsoo beneath him, fists clenched and ready. “What are you getting us in to?”  
Myungsoo flinched, ready for the blow to hit. It never came. He opened his eyes to look at Sungyeol above him.  
Sungyeol’s eyes were darting around them, bouncing around the room. There were framed mirrors all around them in this room, covering every surface – the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor. He started to rise, but Myungsoo held tight on to him.  
“Is this a trap? Are you working with her?” His voice had lost power in fear, but his voice was stern and even. “What are you getting out of this?”  
There was a chance then, and Myungsoo took it. He flipped Sungyeol over and stood up. Sungyeol watched him in a daze, unmoving.  
“You aren’t really doing this, are you? Myungsoo?”  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, hyung. Take care of Dongwoo hyung. Make sure he’s okay.”  
“Myungsoo – wait – Myung – Dongwoo hyung?” He stuttered, slowly realizing that he was trapped, that it was already too late as Myungsoo stepped backwards out the door, closing it, murmuring quiet apologies and promises.  
Myungsoo held the door closed, kept his fingers on the knob as he heard Sungyeol stumble his way back up and over to the door, shouting and swearing at him.  
“Open the door, Myungsoo!”  
He took a deep breath and locked the door.  
“Myungsoo!! Hey!! What did you do to Dongwoo hyung?!”  
He turned slowly, facing himself and the woman in the mirror. She gave him an approving smile before she vanished. Myungsoo smoothed his hair and fixed his clothes, taking another couple deep breaths until he calmed himself enough to think of his next move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to finish this story before March 2017 but not sure if I'll be able to or not...


	15. Myungsoo (pt. 3)

“Where are they?” He asked. He was heading back to their rooms upstairs, hands trailing along the railing on the stairs. He knew that she was there with him, next to him in every mirror he passed. She always was.  
“I’ll separate them. Just wait,” she directed. He felt her fingernails like claws in the base of his neck. A threatening reminder of what she could do. “Just keep your end of the bargain.”  
Myungsoo lifted a hand and slammed it on the mirror. “Of course I will,” he scowled.  
She smiled at him between his fingers. He trudged back up the stairs, not knowing what else to do, gritting his teeth and trying to seem compliant.  
He didn’t know enough about how this place worked to try to take it down. Right now all he could do was try not to think about what he was doing, to walk past the rooms as quietly as he could. He couldn’t deal with Woohyun now, not yet. Don’t think about it, he thought. You won’t be able to do it if you think about it.  
But he couldn’t stop. Was he smart enough to do something, to trick the woman in to letting them go?  
Now, Myungsoo. He heard her whispers. He was never without her whispers now.  
Hoya swung out of the stairwell, brows furrowed and his shoulders squared. He wasn’t even looking where he was going as he headed back towards their rooms. Shouldn’t he be more careful?  
“Hyung?”  
He spun around to look at him.   
The look he gave hit him like a brick, and he wanted to give up. He wanted to cry and say what happened, that Sungyeol and Dongwoo hyung were both doomed because of him.  
“Myungsoo?”  
He started towards him, and Hoya stopped him, grabbing him tightly around his arms and shoulders. He wasn’t sure whether or not Hoya suspected something, or if he was just worried, if he didn’t realize how hard he was squeezing his arms.  
“Myungsoo, what happened? Where’s Sungyeol?”  
Myungsoo shook his head. He couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t find an excuse fast enough.  
“What happened?”  
“I don’t know,” he stuttered. Was he convincing? “The woman. She came at us with an ax or something and we started running. I must have lost Sungyeol hyung at some point.”  
“Is he okay?”  
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know, hyung.”  
What was he supposed to do about Hoya? He could fight, but could he beat Hoya?  
“We have to find him,” Hoya said decisively. He was nodding, and dropped his arms to his sides as he started to pace. He was mumbling to himself, trying to account for everybody, trying to find the best plan. Myungsoo watched him, waiting for a chance. He started to turn. “We should get Woohyun.”  
No. He had to keep them separated.  
Myungsoo grabbed on to Hoya’s arm. “Where is he?”  
He froze. When he spoke it was quietly. “What?”  
He believed him. He hadn’t seen him yet.  
Hoya pulled his arm out of Myungsoo’s hands and shoved him in the chest. “What is it?” He growled. He was angry, but not at Myungsoo. He knew this. If he stayed calm, he could manipulate Hoya’s anger.  
“He wasn’t in the room. I assumed he was with you.”  
“He wasn’t in any of them?”  
Hoya turned and kicked the wall, his hands balled in to fists. Myungsoo grabbed on to his arm again, pulling him away from the wall and trying to calm him down. If he could keep Hoya quiet, Woohyun wouldn’t hear them. He would wait and wait until the woman found him, and he wouldn’t have to deal with him at all.  
“Calm down. If you’re too noisy, she’ll find out where we are.”  
Hoya made a face. He wanted to fight.  
“No, stop it,” he said, patting him on the arms. They couldn’t win, and Myungsoo didn’t want to lose Hoya, too. Did they have a chance, if Myungsoo told Hoya the truth, if he asked for his help?  
No, the woman whispered to him.  
“Let’s go find everyone else, okay?”  
Hoya pulled away from Myungsoo and apologized. Myungsoo pat him on the shoulder again, and started leading him back downstairs. He could feel Hoya close behind him, tense and hyper-aware of the hotel as they headed in to the lobby. He heard Hoya’s footsteps stop behind him, but he kept walking. He hadn’t come down this hall before, but he recognized something about it.  
Something had changed. Was it in him, or was it the woman?  
Myungsoo stopped at a door and cracked it open.  
“Ah,” he breathed, taking a step inside. He recognized the table. There were so many mirrors, all reflecting himself, all judging himself as he betrayed his friends one by one. Dongwoo was nowhere to be found, but he could see Hoya in one of the mirrors.  
“Myungsoo, where did you go?” Hoya called.  
He reached up and touched it, just briefly, just enough to see through it, to see Hoya face to face through the mirror like the woman had the night before. He pulled his hand away, staring in to the mirror, and then looking at all of them, each of them reflecting a different part of the hotel.  
And the bathroom?  
He paced in to the bathroom, hoping to God that it wouldn’t show what he was afraid it would.  
“Hyung.”  
“What is it?” Hoya stepped in to the room.  
Myungsoo shook his head, trying not to say anything, covering his mouth and leaving the bathroom.  
He saw Woohyun in the mirror, sitting in what was Sunggyu’s room.  
The woman had been watching him the whole time, keeping a constant eye on him as long as he’d stayed there. He put his hand on his chest, wishing his heart would stop beating so fast, hoping that it wouldn’t beat straight out of his chest.  
“What?” Hoya asked him, not sure whether he should comfort him or not.  
He tried to get himself together, to make an excuse.  
Myungsoo, don’t forget your promise. A thousand voices from the woman echoed in his ears from all around him.  
He heard Hoya’s footsteps leave his side, and step in to the bathroom.  
He turned around. Hoya’s back was wide in the doorway, and but his attention wasn’t on Myungsoo anymore.  
He took a deep breath and stole his chance, pulling the door closed.  
“Myungsoo!” He shouted.  
“I’m sorry, Hyung.” He tried to breathe easy, tried not to cry.  
Hoya was pounding on the door, shouting and screaming at him.  
“Be quiet, Hyung! She’ll hear you. You need to calm down.”  
She’ll hear me too, he thought, if I say anything out loud. Calm down and think, Hoya. Think of a way to get everybody out of this, just like you promised.  
“Calm down? Calm down, Myungsoo?” He growled.  
“Please trust me,” he said. “I’ll take care of everyone. Just wait here, okay?” He locked the door. “Stop it, Hyung. She’ll find you.” His hands fell from the doorknob as Hoya pounded on it and screamed at him. Myungsoo wiped his eyes as he started to take a few steps back, making sure the door would hold him for at least a while. “I’m sorry.”  
“Myungsoo, stop.” He was starting to panic. He could hear it in his voice. “Myungsoo, don’t leave!”  
“I’m so sorry, Hyung.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I won't finish _before_ March, but hopefully by the end of it


	16. Myungsoo (pt. 4)

Myungsoo locked the door to the room behind him and leaned against it, breathing deeply. He could still hear Hoya swearing at him from there, but he couldn’t get himself to move. All his thoughts and plans were stuck painfully in his throat.  
He reveled in Hoya’s anger, his voice, each curse hitting him like a punch to the stomach.  
How could he be doing this?  
Think of her, of Sunggyu. They would be happy. Hoya would find and take care of everybody else, get them home so they could all move on and be happy. He trusted them enough to believe this.  
He took a deep breath before heading back upstairs. He was nervous, but Myungsoo wasn’t sure if it was because he was willingly giving his friends up, or because he was going to have to face Woohyun. He rounded the corner and headed into the room.  
It was empty. It didn’t look disturbed, like he’d had to fight off the woman before he got to him. He searched the rooms, but they were all empty.  
“Hyung?” He called.  
Had Hoya or Sungjong gotten to Woohyun before he did?  
Myungsoo started searching the halls, through rooms he knew were empty and around corners he knew now led to dead ends.  
Silence hit Myungsoo like a revelation.  
The hotel was quiet, and Myungsoo couldn’t even hear the quiet, sibilant whispers of the woman echoing through the hotel walls into his head the way he had before. What had happened? What changed?  
Myungsoo crawled through mirrors, each of them connecting to a different part of the hotel, trying to find his friends or the owner, whoever came first. More and more of the mirrors were being broken, but he was slowly learning to navigate.  
It was the woman that found and stopped him.  
“What do you think you’re doing?” She growled, looking him up and down, like she was trying to determine whether he was worth the trouble.  
“Looking for Woohyun hyung,” he said, his voice gliding over the lie.  
“Go take care of the one downstairs. He’s trouble.”  
“Sungyeol hyung?”  
She caught him by his hair, snapping his head backwards so he was looking at her. “You know which one I mean. He’s breaking out of the room you left him in,” she said.  
 _Dependable Hoya_ , he thought.  
“Your friends are more trouble than you’re worth,” she added.  
“We had a deal,” he reminded her.  
“I’m rethinking it.”  
“That isn’t fair,” he scowled. He stared daggers at her, only wincing when she pulled on his hair again.  
“Fix the problem, or I will,” she demanded, her voice dripping with threats of all she was capable of. Myungsoo knew it well by now, but he agreed to her conditions, and she let him go before disappearing around a corner.  
Myungsoo ran a hand through his hair to fix it, and licked his lips as he thought of a plan. He headed back to Sunggyu’s room, breathing deeply. He had to be calm if this was going to work.  
When he stepped into the bathroom, Myungsoo saw Hoya’s back was to him again, and the doorframe was broken where the lock had held it closed.  
“Hoya hyung,” he said.  
He spun around to face Myungsoo, looking skeptical and annoyed. “What do you want?” He asked. Myungsoo recognized the tone of his voice. He was furious. But had he given up on him yet?  
“You know you still have to break through the other door, right?” He asked.  
Hoya rolled his eyes. “You came back to me for a reason, right?”  
Of course he suspected something, Myungsoo thought. Why wouldn’t he? “You won’t be able to get out before the owner finds you,” he said.  
Hoya put his hands on his hips and raised a brow. “We’ll see about that,” he said spitefully.  
Myungsoo leaned forward on the sink, closer to the mirror. “Hoya hyung,” he said, “You have to stay here. If you start causing problems, it’ll ruin everything.”  
“What the hell are you talking about?” He asked, dissatisfied.  
It occurred to him that he could tell the truth. But he knew if he told the truth, Hoya would want to come back for him, and he couldn’t risk that. He needed Hoya to get everybody and run, and never look back, never regret his decision. He needed Hoya to really believe that he was betraying them, that he didn’t care about any of them.  
“What did she do to make you agree to this? Huh?”  
Myungsoo bit his lip to keep himself from frowning.  
“Did she threaten you?”  
“Why is it always you?” He scowled. “Why is it that every time I try to do something, it’s you that stops me?”  
“You really want me to stop you?” He raised a fist and pulled back, ready to punch the mirror into pieces.  
“Do you really want to cut off communication with the only person who can tell you what’s going on?” He shouted.  
Hoya seemed to consider it, but didn’t lower his fist. “So tell me what’s going on,” he demanded.  
“If you just sit quietly and cooperate, things will work out.”  
“That isn’t an answer.”  
Myungsoo considered it. How much could he say, so Hoya would understand what he had to do?  
“Myungsoo?” He called, his voice impatient and harsh.  
“You’ve been annoying this whole time,” he said, “but you weren’t wrong. About anything.”  
“Say what you mean,” Hoya demanded.   
Of course Hoya saw right through it. “I hate you so much,” Myungsoo muttered.  
Hoya’s jaw hung open and he raised a brow. He was doing his best to keep from smashing everything in front of him. “What was that?”  
“Calm down and think about it, hyung,” he said. “Don’t you think there’s a reason all this is happening?”  
He didn’t seem satisfied. “We came to find Sunggyu hyung, to pay tribute to his sister. What are you trying to do?”  
Myungsoo opened his mouth to talk, but Hoya talked over him.  
“Do you even care about what you’re doing to us?”  
That was it. That was what he needed. He needed Hoya angry, mad at him.  
“To Sunggyu hyung?”  
“Hyung,” Myungsoo said finally. Had he stalled long enough? “I need you to get out of here. Get everybody else and go. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”  
Hoya slammed his hands down on the sink in front of him and started to yell, but Myungsoo backed far enough away that he couldn’t see through the mirror. Whatever connection he’d made was gone now. The woman would find him soon, and he would meet everybody else, and get them as far away from this god forsaken place as he could.  
He couldn’t apologize. Hoya wasn’t the person he needed to apologize to.  
Myungsoo paced out of the room, down the hall. It didn’t take long to find him.  
Sunggyu was ragged, with gaunt cheeks and deep dark circles underneath his eyes. He winced every so often as Myungsoo watched him through reflections in the mirrors, probably from a headache or from dehydration. When he moved, it seemed like he was barely lifting his feet enough to step, moving as little as possible so he would feel as little as possible. He was looking for Woohyun.  
“Myungsoo,” Sunggyu had said, and he could see the realization in his eyes as he looked over at him.  
They finally met. He finally had the courage to look his hyung in the eyes. Myungsoo had avoided talking to him until that moment.  
“Hyung,” he answered.  
“Myungsoo,” he said again, like he was relieved to see him.  
“I’m sorry, Hyung,” he said.  
Sunggyu had tried to laugh, he didn’t hold it against him, wasn’t angry. He just asked for him to stay, not to leave him alone.  
This wasn’t how he wanted this to go. He didn’t want Sunggyu to hurt like this.   
“She really loved you, you know,” he’d said.  
He didn’t want any regrets.  
“Goodbye, Hyung.”  
And he left him, knowing he’d never see him again.  
There was still Woohyun that he had to take care of—one last tie to cut before he could surrender himself to whatever fate the woman had in store for him.  
She found him first, quickly and furiously, slapping him hard enough to knock him over. She pinned him down with her heels as she leaned down to scold him. “I’m very angry with you, Myungsoo,” she said.  
“I’ve done everything you asked. I kept my end of the bargain,” he said, shoving her foot off his shoulder and sitting up. “I was going to take care of Woohyun hyung right now.”  
She stumbled backwards, but didn’t fall. “He’s taken care of,” she answered flatly. “Your job’s done, now.”  
Anxiety poured into him as reality set in. “What did you do to him?” He stammered.   
“You’ve done a good job betraying all your friends,” she said, her eyes unnaturally light as she stared into his. She caught him by the throat, just tight enough that he could barely breathe. “But you’ve been playing dirty, and you need to be punished.”  
He struggled to explain himself, trying to ease her grip on his neck.  
She threw him down into the ground before catching him by the hair. “Don’t protest,” she warned. “This is what you agreed to. You’re mine now.”  
His vision was starting to get spotty.  
She dragged him back through the hotel, and up to the roof. He was unconscious by the time they got there.


	17. Woohyun

Everything had been weird from the beginning of all of this, when he really thought about it. He hadn’t really stopped to think until now. He just kept running around, looking for people and answers.  
At least he’d found Sunggyu hyung, now.  
Woohyun paced across the room, running over things in his mind.   
What was taking Myungsoo and Sungyeol so long? He slipped his phone out of his pocket.  
“Of course,” he muttered. There was no reception. Of fucking course.  
He was worried, and he was getting impatient. Why had he agreed to stay behind again? Because he didn’t want Sunggyu to be alone again. He was scared he would run off again (which was stupid). Because Hoya had been so tense this whole time and it was getting annoying. Because he was mad at Sunggyu for lying and for running.  
He slipped his phone back in to his pants pocket.  
It was because he was mad at Myungsoo. Because Myungsoo was being difficult and disagreeable. Because he couldn’t understand him and he didn’t know who to trust anymore.  
Woohyun heaved a sigh and ruffled his hair.  
He paced some more, back and forth across the room, finally really thinking, trying to reason out where Dongwoo had gone, what was taking Myungsoo and Sungyeol so long, why Sunggyu seemed so weird before he left. Dongwoo had little sense sometimes, but this wasn’t like him. Myungsoo and Sungyeol were probably (hopefully) messing around somewhere instead of taking this seriously.  
But Sunggyu?  
He didn’t know what to make of Sunggyu.  
“Please just do it,” he’d said.  
 _Please._  
He cocked his head thinking about it. What was it hyung was so worried about?  
Woohyun fell into the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and sighed again. He was getting bored, and the more time passed, the more he felt alone. Something about the sound of the rain outside and the hotel lighting was making him feel isolated, like he was the only one in the whole world.  
He closed his eyes for what felt like just a brief second before he was snapping back awake, recoiling like he’d been falling, jumping out of the bed, adrenaline pushing him upwards. He didn’t know how much time had passed but, in the short amount of time he was asleep, he’d dreamt of Sungyeol.  
He was standing in a white room filled with empty frames and mirrors, half of them broken and decorating the floor with sparkling shards of glass.  
“Woohyun?” He’d said. Sungyeol walked towards him, and reached out to him, but couldn’t touch him. “How did you get here?”  
“Sungyeol? Where are you? What’s going on?”  
“I don’t know, but it’s falling apart,” he said. “I think it’s the mirrors.”  
Woohyun opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say.  
“It’s okay,” Sungyeol said, waving a hand in front of him. “I don’t know what will happen if we break them all, but I’m going to try from here. She isn’t happy, though.”  
“She?”  
“And stay away from Myungsoo, okay? He’s involved in all this, but I don’t know how.”  
“ _Myungsoo?_ Our Myungsoo?”  
The crashing noise that came next is what woke Woohyun up—sent him jumping out of the bed, panting. Woohyun wiped sweat from his face and neck, sighing, trying to get himself together. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, checking himself in the mirror. He sighed, and leaned his hand on the frame of the mirror in front of him.  
The image of himself, trapped in a room full of mirrors flashed in front of him. He saw Sunggyu, agonizing in front of the mirror, throwing his fist into it and hurting himself. He saw the woman, the owner of the hotel, with an axe in her hands, ready to attack.  
Woohyun jumped back, holding one hand in the other. He stared at himself in the mirror, his heart feeling like it was going to burst from his chest.  
Something was wrong.  
Everything was wrong. Everything was falling apart.  
Woohyun stared at the mirror for a moment longer, mimicking Sunggyu’s movements, digging his fist into the dent Sunggyu had already made, and made a decision.  
He turned and paced out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs.  
“Myungsoo!” He called. “Where are you? Hey, Myungsoo!”  
There was no answer, no sign of anybody else.  
Everywhere he went was empty rooms and empty mirrors.  
“Sungyeol?” He tried, but there still wasn’t any answer.  
Woohyun started searching the bottom floor again, throwing open any doors he hadn’t before, searching all the rooms twice (or three or four times—had he really missed some, or were the doors being closed by someone?). “Anyone?” He tried hopelessly.  
There was a heavy thud behind him, and Woohyun spun around towards it.  
There was a full-length mirror at the dead end of a hall, and he could see Sunggyu in it. He stumbled, fell.  
“Hyung?”  
He saw Sunggyu try to scramble to his feet, pushing himself against the wall to try to avoid something. He could barely breathe wherever he was, and he looked terrified.  
“Hyung!” Woohyun shouted, running to the mirror.  
Sunggyu’s head jolted, trying to look for Woohyun.  
“Hyung, can you hear me?” Woohyun slammed his hands in to the mirror. The closer he got, the bigger he realized the mirror was. He could see down the hall from where Sunggyu was, and he could see the woman walking towards him, slowly.  
“Woohyun?” He called back. Finally. Finally—he was okay enough to answer.  
“Hyung, get up!” _Run,_ he wanted to say. _Get out of there._  
“Woohyun, where are you?” His voice cracked when he screamed, and he was looking around blindly.  
“I’m here, Hyung!”  
The woman’s head craned to look at him, and her trajectory changed towards the mirror.  
Towards him.  
Once he realized that he couldn’t see Sunggyu (wherever he was) anymore, Woohyun backed up before starting to run away. He heard her behind him around every corner, through every hall. Nearly every mirror he passed was broken now.  
It didn’t take long for her to catch up, and Woohyun turned around to face her head on, now that she was a safe distance away from everybody else.  
He knew she was the cause of all of this. She brought his hyung here, she turned Myungsoo against them, separated all of them so she could pick them all off—one by one.  
He wasn’t about to let her get away with it.  
She was surprised when he attacked her first. He wasn’t as polite as Sunggyu had been—and punched her in the face, the stomach, the arm, wherever he could reach.  
He got three or four solid hits before she stumbled backwards, holding on to her stomach. She was hunched over, and Woohyun thought that was the end of it.  
He let his guard down.  
She came at him, hatchet first. He moved just enough to miss the blade, but not the fist she launched into his stomach.  
He stumbled backwards, and she tripped him. He fell, knocking his head against the floor. She hovered above him and pinned him down.  
He tried to look at her, but his head was spinning and he couldn’t focus. “Stronger than you look, huh,” he mused bitterly, trying (and failing) to get out from underneath her.  
“You’re annoying,” she said, and brought the wooden handle down hard on the side of his head.  
He tried to stay conscious, to say something smart back to her, to keep his eyes from closing, but couldn’t.


	18. Hell

The first thing he felt when he woke up was pain. He’d done this to himself. He deserved everything he got.  
Myungsoo cracked his eyes open.  
He held vague memories of being dragged up here, but he barely recognized where he was. The hotel was different now. Different colors, different lighting. It was quieter here, like the storm had passed over them finally, and it was cold. He pushed himself up off the ground and stood up.  
The hotel was rundown now, with rotting woods and peeling wallpapers. Everything was caked in dust and dirt, and there was a musty, wet smell that permeated the air. He tried to find a way out, but it was all endless hallways and quiet promises of his fate to die here.  
That was what he promised. He’d give himself up willingly for his friends to have a chance to get out. He wondered bitterly if it had made a difference, or if it was as futile as it felt to try to find a way out.  
He was startled at the soft sound of footsteps approaching, and looked up only long enough to decide to run.  
A hand caught him by the back of his shirt. He fell trying to catch his footing.  
Something tall, resembling a man towered over him.  
Myungsoo stared up at it with wide eyes.  
He was dressed from his shoes to his head in black, and Myungsoo couldn’t make out a face behind layers of fabric. He scrambled to his feet before the man could make his move, and threw a sloppy punch.  
The man caught his arm and retaliated with a sharp jab into his side.  
Myungsoo stumbled backwards, grasping his side. He watched his opponent carefully, breathing hard and looking for an opening. He rushed in again.  
Every punch he threw was caught, and he was painfully punished for his attempts. The man hit him in the stomach and chest, sending him stumbling back and knocking the air out of him. The next time Myungsoo went in, the man caught him roughly by the arm and pulled him in close. He tried to twist out of his hands, but the man tightened his grip. He punched Myungsoo in the jaw, and let him fall crashing into the ground.  
The man slowly approached Myungsoo, grabbing him by the neck before he could get up, and lifted him up into the air like he was a doll.  
“Let go of me!” He struggled to say, kicking at the man, trying to keep himself calm and breathing.  
“Isn’t this what you promised?” It asked. It was the woman’s voice, vaguely. Its voice slowly melted off its sugar coating so there was only the raw voice of the monster was left as it continued talking. “Be a good boy and wait for me now, Myungsoo. I have to find your friends before they leave.”  
It threw Myungsoo down as his vision started to fade. He gasped for breath as he hit the floor. It snapped beneath him and he crashed through it. He tried to catch himself—banged his arms and scratched his hands. He nearly caught himself, but broke through the next floor until he landed, banging the back of his head against the damp, solid ground of the basement.  
He blinked hard, trying to adjust his eyes to the dark, to chase away the black spots that were clouding his vision. Myungsoo tried to stand up. His arms were shaking and his hands were bleeding, and his legs wanted to give out beneath him. He glared up at the figure, looking down on him from the holes he’d made in the floor.  
“Myungsoo!”  
His head snapped to the side, his eyes wide.  
Woohyun ran to him.  
“What are you doing here?” Myungsoo shouted, shoving Woohyun away as he tried to help him up. “Get out of here! What do you think you’re doing?”  
He shoved Woohyun away again, glancing back up through the floors above them.  
“I’m trying to help you, you little shit,” he said with a scowl, grabbing Myungsoo by his shirt or his collar to pull him up.  
“Get away from me!”  
“What’s wrong with you?”  
“Hurry!” Myungsoo shouted, stumbling as he tried pushing him one last time. Woohyun caught him gently, holding him up.  
The man jumped from his perch and landed gracefully in front of them.  
“Myungsoo?” Woohyun mumbled shakily.  
“This isn’t what you promised,” he stammered. “You said you’d let them go.”  
“What are you talking about?” Woohyun asked through the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on the man in black and his hands protectively on Myungsoo.  
“This isn’t fair. This isn’t what we agreed on,” he said. He steadied himself and stood up on his own.  
The man didn’t move.  
“He isn’t supposed to be here,” Myungsoo reiterated through strained, heavy breaths and clenched fists.  
Woohyun moved before he had a chance—jumping forward and throwing a heavy fist at the man. The man deflected it and hit Woohyun back.  
Myungsoo jumped in next. The man knocked him back, into the ground. He heard Woohyun shout, and saw him dart past for another round. Myungsoo pushed himself up and joined as Woohyun took a punch in the jaw, trying to create an opening for him. He got kicked back again, and Woohyun took a chance. Myungsoo rushed in, but the man punched him hard, knocking the air out of him. Woohyun fell next to him a few seconds afterwards, and the man grabbed ahold of them both before they could get up.  
He could hear Woohyun choking next to him, trying to say something.  
He had to do something.  
Myungsoo summoned whatever strength he had left in him to hit the man’s hands off his face, and push himself as far away from the man as he could.  
Woohyun stumbled next to him, frantically trying to get away and trying to catch Myungsoo before he hit the ground again. “Run,” he said as loudly as he could manage, his voice still only barely above a hoarse whisper. He grabbed Myungsoo by his shirt, pulling him along as he started to run down hallways and up ramps and stairs.  
Myungsoo found his footing and followed as closely as he could manage, pushing himself off walls and around corners to stay upright. They were running deeper and deeper into whatever this place was, and it was getting darker and darker the farther they went.  
Somewhere ahead of them there was light—a deep, orange colored light. They slowed when they saw it, and Woohyun led Myungsoo carefully down a ramp, into a large room. Thick, concrete pillars held the tall ceiling up, while candles and torches dyed the room shades of red and orange.  
“Are we in hell?” Myungsoo asked behind him.  
Woohyun laughed. “Something like that, maybe.”  
He started searching the room for anything that could help them, only finding piles of papers and trash littered across the room.  
“Our first priority should be finding a way out,” Woohyun was saying as he started gathering everything he could find together.  
“I don’t know if there is one,” Myungsoo answered. “Have you seen anyone else?”  
“No, but it seems like we’re in pretty deep here,” he said, moving around the room like he had any sort of plan. “They might have already gotten out.”  
That would be nice, Myungsoo thought. He leaned his back against a pillar and closed his eyes, trying to not let his exhaustion get the better of him. He focused on the sounds of Woohyun moving around the room.  
He peeled open his eyes when he heard the footsteps stop.  
The man was standing between them, with his shoulders squared and his fists balled at his sides.  
Myungsoo stood up straight, gaping at Woohyun past the man.  
Woohyun knew he had to do something, and did what he did best.  
“It took you this long to catch up with us?” He taunted.  
The man turned his back on Myungsoo as he stared down Woohyun. His fists were so tightly clenched they were shaking. He took a step forward, but Woohyun held his ground and kept talking.  
“The two of us are ragged already—what’s the rush, right?”  
“Hyung,” Myungsoo warned, watching their exchange carefully.  
“Unless,” Woohyun began, wagging his finger like he’d figured something out, “you were hoping we’d know where the others are.”  
There was something in the way the man reacted—something in the way he jabbed Woohyun then—it was clumsy, emotional—that gave Myungsoo a bit of hope. Woohyun stumbled back, barely catching himself on the pillar next to him, but they had him.  
He didn’t know where the others were.  
Maybe there was hope, after all.  
Woohyun was quiet as he composed himself again, as the man continued towards him. “I’m sorry but,” he managed to say through heavy breathing, “either we’re getting out of here alive… or we’re taking you down with us.”  
His hand dropped next to him, and he sent a candle into a pile of dried papers. It lit up, spreading quickly around the room through all the garbage he’d arranged beforehand. Woohyun smiled as the man looked around, looking just as panicked as Myungsoo felt.  
The man started towards Woohyun. Myungsoo caught him by the arm and aimed for his face.  
He barely stalled, brushing Myungsoo’s fist aside, and kicked him into the ground.  
The wind was knocked out of him, and Myungsoo struggled to catch his breath again. He saw the man grab Woohyun at the roots of his hair, throw him back towards the fires he’d started. His vision was getting spotty now.  
He caught himself, and ran at the man.  
_Hyung._  
He tried to yell, but no sound came out of his mouth.  
He couldn’t get up, couldn’t move. He tried to blink back his vision, his strength.  
The next thing he saw, Woohyun was on his knees in front of the man.  
 _Stop_ , he tried to say.  
Myungsoo saw Woohyun’s mouth move, but he couldn’t make out the words beneath the sound of blood rushing in his ears. The man sent Woohyun to the ground with a solid kick to his chest, catching him by his jaw.  
“You’re annoying,” he said before letting him fall to the ground.  
The man stood up, lifted his foot above Woohyun’s head, and—  
“Stop! Leave him alone!” Myungsoo screamed.  
He set his foot back down on the ground as he turned to look back at Myungsoo.  
He pushed himself up off the ground shakily, his arms threatening to give out beneath him. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore.”  
“You think you can stop me?” The man asked. “You started all this. You came here knowing full well what you were getting into. We made a deal and I kept it. I gave them a chance. We’re here because of you, and none of us are leaving until one of us dies.”  
Myungsoo fell forward as he tried to stand, catching himself on hands and knees.  
“It won’t be me,” he finished saying, kicking Myungsoo down again.  
He didn’t have the strength to catch himself, to try to push himself up again as the man walked away, through the halls, and around a corner until he was out of sight.  
The building was burning around him, and Woohyun still wasn’t moving. The man would find everyone else if they weren’t safe. Or would the fires get them first?  
“Hyung,” he called across the room, slowly moving towards his friend. “Hyung, we have to get out of here.”  
Woohyun stirred.  
Myungsoo reached him, and slapped his face lightly to wake him. “Hyung.”  
Woohyun cracked his eyes opened and groaned. “If this place goes down in flames, he’ll have to leave, too.”  
“I don’t know if he _can_ leave,” Myungsoo said, pushing himself off the ground and steadying himself on the pillar next to him. “But we’ll die if we don’t get out of here.”  
Woohyun rolled over before pushing himself slowly, trying not to breathe too deeply. “You don’t think he can leave?”  
Myungsoo helped him up, and Woohyun led them out of the room. “He said we’re not leaving until one of us dies or something. But think about it. Does it make sense that he came back for us? The others can’t be far out, if they did get out.”  
The more they walked the better they felt. They walked softly, conscious of their footsteps crunching and echoing down the halls. It was getting brighter, and they could hear heavy foot falls in front of them. When they heard the footsteps stop, they ducked behind a corner.  
The building was different now. It was dark, but with bright, sharp strips of blinding light pouring in from _somewhere_. They saw the silhouette of the man against it.  
“Is it morning again?” He heard Woohyun ask next to him.  
Had it been that long? He’d lost track of time since he’d been trapped here.  
“Do you see that? That—wooden thing?”  
Myungsoo squinted against the light. There was some sort of wooden lift, hanging from the ceiling somewhere. It looked like it was used in construction or something. He imagined the man used it, despite whatever its original intention was, for torture. He knew what Woohyun was thinking.  
“We have one chance, so we have to get it right,” Myungsoo said.  
“Glad we’re on the same page.”  
And they ran, with everything they had left in them. The man turned as they reached the lift, grabbed onto it.  
They had every intention to try to break his back as they rammed it into him.  
But instead they lifted him off the ground and into the light.  
He disintegrated right in front of them. Into ashes.  
Myungsoo looked to his side, at Woohyun. He smiled, and they both collapsed with relief.


	19. Windows

Woohyun took a few slow, deep breaths before his eyes left Myungsoo and travelled upwards. It was a few moments as Woohyun inspected the ceiling, shielding his eyes from the blinding light, before he spoke.  
“The light’s coming from outside,” he said.  
Myungsoo looked at him like he was stupid.  
“It means there’s windows. It means there’s a way out.”  
Myungsoo sighed as he watched Woohyun push himself up and dust himself off.  
“Come on,” he urged.  
“Please give me a minute, Hyung,” he said, resting his head in his hands.  
Woohyun leaned down and tried to pull him up, but Myungsoo pulled his arms back. “Myungsoo,” he said, “we have to hurry. This place is still on fire, in case you forgot.”  
“I know, Hyung. Please just give me a minute.”  
“We have to find everybody else and get out of here.”  
“They weren’t supposed to be here to begin with,” Myungsoo said.  
“Right,” Woohyun muttered.  
Myungsoo’s head snapped up. “She’d give them a chance if I helped. That was the deal.”  
“Uh huh, right. The deal you made by throwing yourself at that woman?”  
“What?” He pushed himself off the ground and into Woohyun’s face. “What did you just say? I wasn’t _throwing myself_ at her!”  
“Then what were you doing, betraying all of us to help her?”  
“She had Dongwoo hyung. Did you expect me to just let her hurt him right in front of my eyes? I had to do _something._ At least I bought everybody else time. What did you do huh? Why did she hate you so much, to drag you here with me?”  
“Wait—hold on.” Woohyun took a step back, waving his arms to keep from swinging. “She had Dongwoo hyung and you _knew?_ And you didn’t say anything?”  
“How could I?” Myungsoo yelled. “Are you stupid? She knew everything that went on in that place! If I said anything, she would have killed all of us then and there. I got everybody else a chance and you might have ruined it.”  
“I’m sorry?” Woohyun shouted back, his voice raising half an octave in shock. “I was trying to get Sunggyu hyung out of here and back to Seoul. _You_ were the one trapping everybody here.”  
“Oh my god.”  
“What?” He said, his hands balling up into fists automatically. Woohyun tilted his head, trying to hold himself back as he watched Myungsoo pace back and forth. “What? Say it, Myungsoo.”  
“Shut up about Sunggyu hyung for a minute.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“I said shut up!” His eyes stared daggers. “For once in your life, just be quiet, would you?”  
Woohyun raised a fist, but Myungsoo landed the punch first.  
Woohyun was too shocked to do anything else.  
When Myungsoo opened his mouth to talk again, Woohyun retaliated. He punched him back.  
Woohyun kicked him before he could straighten up, sending him backwards into one of the concrete pillars.  
He didn’t miss a beat. Myungsoo launched himself off the concrete, back at Woohyun, tackling him around the waist.  
Woohyun knocked him down again with a heavy fist to the head. Myungsoo caught him with a kick on his way down.  
“You little—,” he began.  
Myungsoo smirked and pulled him down by his shirt, rolling over on top of him and pinning him down. Woohyun tried to catch his fists as Myungsoo punched him, but couldn’t.  
“You—ruined—everything—,” he was yelling. Woohyun could barely hear over the rush of blood in his ears and the adrenaline in his blood.  
All it took was one good hit to knock Myungsoo off of him.  
They both scrambled to their feet, eyes narrowing as they watched each other for just a split second before they started throwing fists again—hitting faces, ribs, backs, whatever they could reach. Woohyun caught him in the jaw, and Myungsoo went limp, falling forward into him and onto the ground when he didn’t have the strength to hold him up.  
His eyes were glossy but he was conscious—barely.  
Woohyun hoisted him up by an arm, wrapping it around his neck. “Come on. We’re getting out of here,” he muttered.  
Myungsoo mumbled something next to him, but he could barely hear him.  
“Come on,” he said again.  
He started walking, Myungsoo’s tired, clumsy feet trying next to his each time they took a step. They went through the streams of light, up the concrete ramps and stairs to find whatever windows there were. They needed a way out before the smoke and flames caught up to them.  
“We’re getting out of here, and we’re getting home.”  
Myungsoo was gaining his footing the more they walked, but he could barely hold his own head up. He was murmuring replies when Woohyun spoke, but nothing he could make out.  
They rounded a corner. He saw light.  
“Hyung,” Myungsoo said next to him.  
He almost dropped him trying to run to the window.  
Myungsoo lifted his head.  
“No, no. Shit.”  
Heavy iron bars covered the window. Enough to fit a head through, maybe, but not shoulders. Not a body.  
“This can’t be happening.”  
He set Myungsoo against the wall, and he held himself up. Woohyun tried pulling the bars off, yanking them off the wall or bending them. When that didn’t work, he slammed his hands into them.  
Myungsoo’s legs gave out underneath him, and he slumped against the wall. “Hyung,” he said again, louder, more desperately this time.  
Woohyun was trying to rip the bars out of the wall. “ _What,_ Myungsoo?” He managed through clenched teeth.  
Myungsoo coughed. “We can’t get out of here, Hyung,” he said.  
_We’re going to die here,_ is what he meant.  
“We’re gonna get out, Myungsoo.”  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Hyung.”  
“Stop.”  
“I’m sorry. I was trying to help Sunggyu hyung. She said she’d bring her back—I just thought--…”  
“Stop it, Myungsoo.”  
Woohyun could hear him crying, and couldn’t bear to look down at him. “It was supposed to be just me. You weren’t supposed to be here, too.”  
“So you punched me in the face?”  
Myungsoo laughed. Lightly, but still. It was something.  
Woohyun dropped his hands from the bars in front of the window and offered it to Myungsoo. “Let’s go. We’re getting out of here.”  
Myungsoo took his hand and pulled himself up. “Maybe there’s a door somewhere,” he said, holding himself up on Woohyun as they limped together down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I just wrote BTD.......... there's more original content next chapter I promise lol


	20. Filling the Holes

Sungjong opened the door and slammed it shut behind him, locking it to keep the woman as far away from him as possible.  
He was expecting the roof, but he was still indoors. The lights were flickering, in and out and purple, and it was hard to see anything when he spun around to look down the hallway.  
It extended what looked like forever, and there was movement at the end of it.  
He felt the weight of his mistake and regret sink into him as he peered through the flashing lights.  
The woman was approaching him, walking, walking slowly towards him, from the far end of the hall, the flashing from the lights transforming her into a taller, shadowed, more ominous monster that was coming towards him.  
Sungjong spun back around to the door and fumbled with the lock, struggled to unlock it. He stumbled through the doorway, stopping when he saw the different light fixtures, the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that hadn’t been there before, the color of the carpet was different.  
He checked over his shoulder for the woman, but even the door behind him was gone now. He saw his own reflection staring shakily back at him, wherever he was. Sungjong reached a careful hand out and touched it, feeling the cold solidness of it beneath his fingers. He was stuck here (wherever here was). He started pacing through the building, looking for any semblance of the building they’d spent the night in before.  
Had it been some sort of illusion before? Something to trick them into thinking they were safe here?  
No, this was the real thing now. The thick, humid air and the storm raging outside told him that. The dilapidated walls and the carpet filled with mildew told him that. He didn’t have the anxiety and the fear he’d had back in the mall in Seoul or even on the train on the way here. It was replaced by a calm, intense focus and the need to find his friends.  
Sungjong’s hands trailed along the damp walls as he walked through the hotel, looking for any sign of his friends, listening for any sound that wasn’t the storm.

* * *

_Calm down and think about it, hyung,_ Myungsoo had said, _don’t you think there’s a reason all this is happening?_  
Yeah, you decided to betray us all. But why? What was there to gain?  
_I need you to get out of here. Get everybody else and go._  
Myungsoo had conceded that he wasn’t wrong. Hoya had been right—it was a mistake to one, come here in the first place and two, stay for the night.  
Three, that the woman was somehow forcing Myungsoo into doing what she wanted him to do. Probably.  
Hoya fought the urge to force his way out of the room. Myungsoo had said to cooperate. He had some sort of plan and he was trusting Hoya to trust him for it to work out.  
Probably.  
As much as it pained him, he was going to have to wait to get Myungsoo back for all this.  
He waited until he saw the nicely manicured fingernails of the woman curl around the mirror for him. She pulled herself through the mirror slowly, hands cupping his face as he froze to watch her. Her breath curled around him like a snake, hissing in his ears as she pulled him back through the mirror with him.  
He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he had to follow her to get to everybody else.  
Probably.

* * *

_Sunggyu hyung was right in front of him, barely holding himself up as he struggled down a hallway._  
“Hyung?”  
_He tripped, fell._  
“Are you okay?”  
_He reached out to help him, but Sunggyu hyung looked up._  
“Dongwoo?”  
He roused painfully, cracking his eyes open before he dared to move anything else. The hotel looked a lot more worn down from this angle.  
No, the lights were different, he thought, and why was he asleep on the floor?  
Why did his body hurt?  
Dongwoo pushed himself up off the ground and looked around. This wasn’t the hotel from before. He’d been kidnapped by whatever was in his room that night and brought wherever he was now. Where were his friends? Were they okay?  
Had he been dreaming just now, of Sunggyu hyung?

* * *

The isolation was draining, and Sungjong was starting to lose hope that he’d ever see his hyungs again. He could barely hear the storm now, and the quiet was driving him crazy.  
He circled the floor of the building, looking for a stairwell. There were a few emptied elevator shafts, but the floors were too far apart and the wood too rotted through to even think about climbing down them. He’d searched the floor thoroughly, and found no sign of his friends, the woman, the monster she’d turned in to, or of the old hotel.  
His focus came back at a sound from down the hall.  
Sungjong rushed towards it.  
It was yelling.  
He could see the mirror he’d come from at the end of the hall, and in it was Sunggyu, searching, coming towards him.  
_No._ If he came here, he might not be able to leave.  
“Don’t come here, Hyung!”  
Sunggyu stopped. “Sungjong? Where…” He could barely hear him. “…with you?”  
Sungjong ran to the mirror and hit it like it was a tv screen. He had to warn him. He had to help him. He had to do _something_ to make up for leaving him alone before.  
“She isn’t alone, Hyung,” he said. “Turn around. Go!”  
Sunggyu shook his head. “What?”  
“Hyung—Ah!!” Sungjong screamed as the mirror shattered in front of him. He stepped back from it, seeing only himself and the run-down building behind him.

* * *

He fell into a world swathed in purple, trying to catch his footing without knowing which way was up. He fell, twisting his ankle as he tried to catch himself, landing hard on his shoulder.  
The woman landed above him, digging her heels into his ribs. When he moved, she kicked him in the sides, in his ribs, in his back until he stopped. And then she kicked him in the back of the head.  
Hoya tried to shield himself, move his arms in time to block her feet, but he was too late.  
The blow came hard, deafening.  
He tried to blink back the darkness threatening his vision.  
He heard her say something, like he was underwater. He looked up at her as she started to walk away from him. He tried to follow her, but it hurt to move.  
_Wait,_ he tried to say. _You aren’t done with me yet._  
His head lulled.  
And he saw her target. It was Sunggyu.  
“No!” He yelled, grabbing at her ankles.  
She shook him off and continued. “I don’t have _time_ for you,” she spat.  
Hoya pushed himself off the ground and ran to him. “Run, Hyung. Run. Get out.”  
Sunggyu spun around. “Hoya?”  
The woman shoved Hoya back, and he stumbled again, hitting his head on his way down.  
Sunggyu didn’t see him, but he saw the woman and started to run.  
Good.  
The last thing Hoya saw was Sunggyu running away from him.

* * *

Dongwoo moved slowly through the old building. It took nearly all the courage he had to just leave the room he’d woken up in, and it was quickly sapping the rest to force himself to _walk through it_. He tried to laugh at how much his legs were shaking, but couldn’t muster the energy. He tried to piece together everything that happened up until now, how he got here. There was so much missing, so many holes in his memory.  
And now he was here with no idea where he or his friends were. Was he even in danger? Were they?  
He didn’t know.  
Were they looking for him? If they were, he should stay put. Isn’t that the rule?  
Dongwoo let out a shaky breath as he turned a corner. He rubbed his hands together nervously, without realizing he was doing it. Everything was backwards here, and all the mirrors were broken.  
That was a bad sign.  
It was dark, but it wasn’t storming anymore. That was okay.  
He had to stop at any sound he thought he might have heard until his heart calmed down enough for him to continue walking.  
When he really heard footsteps, his heart jumped to his throat.  
He heard doors opening.  
Footsteps again.  
Louder.  
He tried to move.  
Louder.  
He covered his mouth.  
Getting closer.  
_No no no please go away please leave me alone_  
Dongwoo tried to move, stumbling backwards instead and falling.  
Footsteps again.  
He closed his eyes without meaning to.  
A voice.  
Yelling.  
Hands on his arms and he tried to fight them off, but they were tight around his wrists.  
Dongwoo recognized his own voice—that he was the one yelling.  
“Please stop it! Let go of me!!”  
The arms didn’t.  
He tried to stop yelling, to focus on freeing his arms.  
He peeled his eyes open.  
“Hyung!”  
Dongwoo stopped to see Sungjong kneeling in front of him, his hands on his wrists. He breathed. Laughed. Tried not to cry.  
Sungjong smiled, dropping his wrists and hugging Dongwoo. “Hyung, are you okay?”  
“You scared me!”  
Sungjong laughed as he looked over his hyung, checking for injuries. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”  
“I’m okay. Where did you come from?”  
Sungjong brushed the hair out of his face as he stood up. “I don’t know exactly. How long have you been here?”  
“I don’t know, either. Do you know where we are?”  
Sungjong offered and hand and pulled Dongwoo to his feet. “Not exactly. The owner of the hotel cornered me in here. She probably brought you here, too.”  
Dongwoo tried to process the information.  
“Let’s try to find a way out, okay?”

* * *

He sat up quickly, alert as soon as he was conscious. But he was alone, and in a different place. Well, maybe the same place, without the purple.  
Hoya rubbed his eyes. Everything hurt. He’d half hoped that what had happened before was a dream, but the pain was proof that it wasn’t.  
He hoped Sunggyu was safe, away from the woman.  
Hoya pushed himself up, using the wall for support. He lifted his shirt and checked his ribs. They were tender and already bruising, but it didn’t seem like they were fractured. His head wasn’t bleeding. He could see okay.  
What now?  
First order of business was to find everybody else, he guessed.  
Hoya ran a hand through his hair, stretched his neck, and started searching.  
At first, he felt a sense of urgency. He waited around corners, listening hard before he rounded them to another empty hall. He was nervous about opening doors.  
The anxiety faded into fear of isolation, and Hoya realized he might be alone in this place. He might have made a mistake. Maybe Myungsoo miscalculated?  
He tried to calm himself: the building was big. There was a lot of ground to cover, and he had no choice but to continue to look, either for his friends, or for a way out.  
How long could he walk with a twisted ankle?  
Forever, if he had to.  
Hoya checked rooms, checking whatever windows he could find. They were all bolted shut. Even if he could break them somehow and get through them, it didn’t look climbable.  
Windows were few and far between everything he’d gone through, and seemed so far to be a hopeless cause. A door was looking like his only hope.  
Hoya stopped checking rooms as thoroughly after that, and focused on finding a ground floor. The stairs were rickety and rotten, and he cringed with every step he took, afraid the creaking would give away his position, and afraid they would collapse beneath him.  
He breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived safely at the bottom, and sat down, leaning against a wall to rest his ankle. He was sweating from the pain in his ankle. It hurt constantly now, even without weight on it, and it hurt badly enough that it drowned out the pain everywhere else.  
He was still resting when Sungjong and Dongwoo found the stairs.  
“Hyung!” Sungjong shouted, rushing down to him.  
Dongwoo followed. He hadn’t let go of Sungjong’s hand since they’d found each other.  
Hoya stood up at once. “Hyung!” He echoed, hugging Dongwoo as soon as he saw him. “Are you okay?”  
“I’m okay,” Dongwoo said, hugging him back. He saw Hoya wince. “Are you okay?”  
“I’m fine. Sungjong?”  
“I’m okay, Hyung,” he said with a nod.  
Dongwoo patted Hoya on the back.  
“We were looking everywhere for you,” Hoya said. “What happened to you?”  
Dongwoo shrugged. “Sungjong says that woman must have gotten me, but I don’t remember. Why weren’t we together?”  
Hoya huffed. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Myungsoo had some sort of plan when he got us all separated, but—…”  
“Wait, _Myungsoo hyung_?” Sungjong echoed.  
“I don’t know what he was thinking. We need to find everybody else and a way out, though, that’s the priority.”  
“Right, okay,” Sungjong agreed with a nod. “Let’s get started.”  
Dongwoo had his arm around Hoya still. “Can you walk? Lean on me. Let’s go.”


	21. Sungyeol

He hoped to God Dongwoo was okay.  
He could see almost everything in the mirrors that surrounded him, but he couldn’t find Dongwoo. He could see the rest of his friends, watch helplessly as Myungsoo betrayed them all. He tried screaming at him without understanding how or why he could see him through the mirror as if it were a window, but Myungsoo couldn’t hear him.  
He was helpless from here.  
Sungyeol slumped onto the ground, listening to the panicking voices of his friends, the thousands of running footsteps echoing around him, the distancing storm somewhere outside the walls. He could hear Myungsoo talking to Hoya, but Sungyeol couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to listen to his voice right now. He punched the mirror in frustration and anger.  
The woman’s head snapped to look at him, and he froze under her stare. She started to walk towards him, slowly extending an arm towards the mirror.  
Sungyeol drove his fist into it before she reached it, the glass digging into his hands instead of her.  
He heard her behind him, and he spun around, breaking that one, too. And the next time, and the next, each time her image a little more distorted, a little more inhuman, until his hands were covered and dripping in blood and he didn’t see her anymore. He waited with baited breath for her next appearance, but she didn’t come.  
Instead, he saw Woohyun, standing, staring at him.  
In another, he saw Woohyun sleeping.  
They stared at each other, trying to figure if they were each real.  
“Woohyun?” He asked. He tried to reach out to him, reach through the mirror. He could, just barely, but not enough. “How did you get here?”  
“Sungyeol? Where are you? What’s going on?”  
He watched Woohyun in both mirrors. He wouldn’t stay asleep for long.  
“I don’t know, but it’s falling apart,” he said, pulling his hand back. “I think it’s the mirrors.”  
Woohyun tried to understand.  
“It’s okay.”  
Woohyun shook his head, gesturing around him.  
“I don’t know what will happen if we break them all, but I’m going to try from here. She isn’t happy, though.”  
“She?” He asked, desperate for answers.  
Sungyeol wished he could explain it all to him.  
“And stay away from Myungsoo, okay? He’s involved in all this, but I don’t know how.”  
“ _Myungsoo?_ Our Myungsoo?”  
The woman was coming for him again, and he shattered the mirror before she could get to him. The sound woke Woohyun, and he was awake and moving when he found him in the mirrors next, shouting, shouting, but he could barely hear above every other sound in the hotel.  
He slumped back against a wall and listened until he heard something different.  
One voice stuck out.  
“… _we won’t have much time_ …”  
Sungyeol looked for the source of the voice. It was the woman—the owner of the hotel. He moved to the mirror. She was talking into another frame, but he couldn’t see what was reflected in it.  
He stomped on the mirrors beneath his feet so they broke to quiet the noise so he could hear her better.  
“They will get to you before then,” she said. Her voice was doubled, a deep, growling sound beneath the voice he was used to hearing. “And anything can happen in the eye of the storm.”  
“I will have them all,” the growling voice continued.  
The woman became preoccupied with something else, and disappeared through another mirror. He tried to find her. She was here somewhere, doing something to someone.  
 _There._  
Suddenly it was Sunggyu in front of him like Woohyun had been, stumbling blindly through a hallway like he was half dead in one frame, and unconscious on the floor in another. He was almost tangible, almost close enough to talk to… but he was looking around like he wasn’t quite seeing the same thing as Sungyeol, like he was in a different world completely.  
He stumbled, barely catching himself on the wall.  
“Hyung!”  
He looked up.  
“Sungyeol?”  
 _He heard him._  
“Sungyeol? Where are you? Are you okay?”  
Worry about yourself, he wanted to say. “Hyung, listen to me. You had the right idea all along.” He knew he didn’t have much time before whatever this was was interrupted. He hoped Sunggyu knew what he meant. “I’ll leave you an exit, okay?”  
His answer was more panicked than logical. “What are you talking about?” He shouted, not sure where to look.  
“Be careful.”  
Sungyeol smashed the rest of the mirrors, shattering them as quickly as he could. All of them but one that lead outside, to the parking garage underneath the hotel. He hoped Sunggyu could find his way if he needed it. The woman came for him from that mirror, threatening to slice his throat open with a piece of one of them.  
They wrestled instead, glass sticking him in the back as she strangled him and he tried to fight her off.  
She claimed her victory, dragging him back through the one intact mirror before he was completely unconscious.

* * *

His hands ached and stung when he moved them, on the surface when he woke up, and Sungyeol remembered what he’d done.  
He rolled onto his back. It was dark wherever he was (a closet, he suspected), and he couldn’t see anything. He knew he wasn’t blind because he could see movement, and maybe the suggestion of light, and his eyes didn’t hurt like they would if the woman had gouged them out like she said she would.  
It was quiet. There was thunder rumbling in the distance. He could hear it still, if he listened hard enough. Something was going to happen when the eye of the storm hit, but he didn’t know what.  
What did he know?  
The woman had been using the mirrors to travel and watch them, probably since Sunggyu hyung had first arrived. Myungsoo did him a favor surrounding him with them, showing him the woman’s biggest strength and probably her biggest weakness. (He wasn’t grateful.)  
“Ahh,” he said. “Myungsoo.”  
There was the taste of iron in his mouth and on the tip of his tongue as his said his name. He was furious, more than anything, with his friend, for a number of reasons. He refused to acknowledge some of them, to even think of them, and finally tried to look for a way out of his situation after lying in the dark trying to come up with some sort of plan for God knows how long.  
Sungyeol started feeling around with his hands. The room was small around him. Everything seemed solid—wait.  
This wall would give way if he applied enough pressure.  
“This way it is then,” he decided.  
Sungyeol kicked through the wall (maybe it was a door?) until light started to break through. Then he used his shoulder to finish it off and force his way through.  
He busted through the door into a dark hotel room. It was different from the one they’d stayed in for the night. This one was musty and damp, like the rain had gotten in through the ceiling. The lighting was extravagant, but old fashioned, and the carpet was different. He was in a completely different building, probably, if not world or dimension or something like that.  
“Unless she’s magic and it was all just an illusion before,” Sungyeol mused to himself.  
He dusted himself off and rinsed his knuckles in the bathroom, then checked the windows. They were barred and wouldn’t budge, even if he could get something through to break the window. It was still cloudy, threatening to rain. They were running out of time if they weren’t out already, he thought, and started quickly down the hall.  
He slowed, stopped when he came to a hole in the floor. He approached it carefully, slowly, and looked down, then up. Whatever fell through fell from a few floors above him, it looked like, and fell all the way down. Sungyeol couldn’t see just how far down it went, but he was certain it was farther down than he’d thought the hotel was originally. It must go underground.  
It looked like he was on the ground floor, which meant an exit. All he had to do was find it.  
Sungyeol sidled around the hole and continued on his way, checking rooms for stairwells and any signs of anybody else in the building with him. Before finding an exit, he found a closet with the hotel’s fuse box.  
He switched it on and off, hoping for any sign of power.  
“There must be a generator somewhere,” he said, absently flipping the switch off and on.  
He stopped, suddenly attentive to sounds coming from outside the closet he was in.  
Footsteps. One set.  
Sungyeol ducked in a shadowed corner of the closet, eyes shaking as he listened for any hint as to who the footsteps belonged to.  
He dared to move when the footsteps had faded enough that he knew they’d passed.  
He peeked out the door.  
A tall man dressed all in black turned to look at him from down the hall.  
 _Shit._  
Run.  
Run.  
Not that way, that’s where he came from. Turn around.  
Sungyeol ran as fast as he could, trying to find his way around the man to the way he was heading, only catching glimpses that the man was still following him as he turned around corners.  
 _Doors._  
“Sungyeol!”  
He fumbled.  
“Run!!” He shouted, looking only long enough to see three bodies.  
A hand caught his shoulder, and his feet ran out beneath him.  
“Sungyeol!!”  
Dongwoo was with him, pulling him upwards and running.  
Sungjong behind him, kicking the man and following.  
“Come on!” Hoya yelled.  
“What about everyone else?” Dongwoo yelled.  
“Come _on!!_ ”  
A yell from behind them.  
Sungyeol spun around. The man had Sungjong by the back of the collar. By the jaw.  
“Sungjong!”  
The lights switched on.  
Sungjong lifted himself up, kicking the man in the face, and twisted out of his grip before running, pushing Sungyeol and Dongwoo back towards Hoya. “I’m fine—go, Hyung!”  
For just a second the man paused—looking up around him at the lights, at the four boys in front of him, at the doors that they all knew led outside, and Hoya threw them open. The man took three large quick steps towards them, but that second too late.  
They were out. They were free.  
And they looked at each other through the threshold, each of them knowing that he couldn’t follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aha I've been waiting to give Sungyeol a bigger part...  
> I'm still working on figuring out how the next chapter is gonna play out, but hopefully it won't take too long. We're getting close to the end here.
> 
> Have a safe and happy Halloween, everybody!!


	22. Smoke and Mirrors

The hotel barely even looked like a hotel anymore. Sunggyu stared up at it in the eye of the storms’ lowlight and rubbed his eyes.  
The outside was all chipped concrete and rusted metals, unlit windows and boarded up doors. Was this really the place he’d stayed for so many days? Whatever spell the woman had put on the building had broken, it looked like.  
He checked the front door. There was a metal grate in front, blocking it. It was stuck closed with a metal pole from the outside (to keep people from getting out, he assumed). Sunggyu pulled the pole out and pushed the grate out of the way. But the door wouldn’t budge when he tried to open it, or when he tried to break through it. The pole bounced back at him when he tried to break the acrylic glass of the door, barely leaving a scuff mark. He moved closer to the door.  
The acrylic was thick. It was probably one of those doors with electronic locks.  
Sunggyu dropped the pole to the ground with a resounding _clang_ that bounced off the buildings around him as he stepped back. There was no getting in the front.  
He searched the perimeter, looking for a way in. All the windows he could see were barred from the outside, so climbing was out. He navigated to the back of the building, to the way he’d arrived the first time and the way he’d escaped—the parking garage. It was shuttered, and too heavy for him to lift and crawl underneath by himself.  
“Damn,” he muttered, taking a few steps back. He looked around for something to prop the door open with when something caught his eye.  
It was a small, boarded up window on ground level. Sunggyu paced over to it before kicking in the wood and peering down into the darkness.  
It looked like a steep drop. It wasn’t the parking garage he was expecting, but a basement instead.  
Sunggyu took a deep breath before sliding down through the hole, feet first.  
He landed hard, feeling the impact in his knees and up through his chest. When he looked back up at the window, he saw how far away it was.  
He’d have to find a different way out, but first he had to find everybody else. It was dark and damp, with a little light coming in from the window he’d kicked in, and a few other poorly boarded windows. There were dark stains on the ground everywhere he stepped, but they were dry when he knelt down to touch them.  
Sunggyu found his way out of the darkened room, into an equally dilapidated hallway. The feeling here was familiar to him—like he was being watched, like he was never alone. Like he would die here with whatever it was, watching him for eternity. This was the hotel he’d seen in the purple light in his dreams and unconsciousness, but it was tangible now.  
This was real.  
No more illusions, no more magic tricks. Sunggyu could feel it in the air—this was the reality of the place he was in. The other hotel he was in was just a façade the woman had put up in the storm to lure him there.  
The hallways were endless as he searched with no goal; the rooms, carbon copies of each other. But he could feel time passing, could feel movement and understand space here. He was making progress.  
He was about to give up and move onto the next floor when he found a locked door.  
 _Generator room._  
Sunggyu slammed his shoulder into it, but it didn’t budge. He tried again and again until his shoulder hurt too much. He tried kicking the door in, but only succeeded in hurting his knee too.  
It had to be reinforced somehow. If he could get the power on, the doors at the front would open and he’d have some light in this damned place. The owner seemed to take plenty of precautions when it came to keeping people captive here—and now he had the problem of finding a possibly small key in a comparatively large building, since he couldn’t break the door down. Sunggyu slammed his bad fist into it as he paced away from the door to start looking again through all the rooms for any sign that a key might be hidden. He hoped she didn’t have it on her, but that’s probably what he would do if he had to keep it safe.  
He paused his search when he found a hole in the floor. It came from somewhere above him—a few floors, it looked like. Sunggyu knelt down to peer into the hole. He couldn’t tell what was down there, what had fallen through (other than _something_ and _recently_ ). It was all fresh breaks and splinters, spotted with blood that made him feel queasy thinking about who it might have come from.  
He started to reach out when he heard a scream. “ _Sungyeol!_ ”  
Sunggyu spun around and started running towards the voice.  
Where was it? Upstairs?  
He’d seen stairs somewhere.  
There were multiple voices yelling—screaming. They were in trouble. He needed to help them.  
 _“What about everyone else?”_  
But he stopped.  
The generator room door was open.  
Sunggyu glanced down the hall—the stairs were there—the screams were there—and instead raced into the generator room.  
He flipped the switch and heard the buzz of electricity as it surged through the building. And faintly, just above the rush of footsteps and panic above him, he heard Sungjong: _“I’m fine—go, Hyung.”_  
Sunggyu looked up around him at the lights, at the room surrounding him, and through another open door, he saw a staircase leading down a floor. He didn’t hear his friends anymore. He heard a frustrated scream from a voice he didn’t recognize and he knew what had happened.  
They’d gotten out. Except for whoever “everyone else” was.  
Myungsoo, he suspected, but who else?  
Before he could try to think of whose voices he heard on the floor above him, he heard heavy footsteps barreling back down the stairs, towards him. Panic burst in his chest, and Sunggyu retreated down the stairs, descending into the darkness, praying that whatever was behind him wouldn’t catch up to him, and praying that his friends were somewhere where he was headed. He hid behind a pillar as soon as he found one and the figure rushed past him without a second look.  
It was a tall man dressed in all black and hard to make out against the darkness of the room around them. Sunggyu tried to follow him, his heart beating so hard he was afraid the man would hear it if he got too close. He waited behind a pile of debris as the man slowed his pace and stopped to unblock a door. The man pulled a key off of his belt and unlocked the door, and stepped in. He came out a few minutes later, his shoulders squared and his fists clenched at his sides.  
He locked the door behind him and left.  
Sunggyu waited for the man to disappear around a corner before he moved, slowly creeping to the door before kicking it in. He could hear the hum of electricity coming from above him. There was a panel on the wall that must have been hooked up to the generator on the floor above him, but Sunggyu suspected it was usually powerless. He flipped the panel open and began to flip the switches, one by one.  
The sound of metal began to screech irritably as he turned the power on, and outside the room, the building slowly brightened with a semblance of light from somewhere overhead.  
He left the room quickly, wiping his fingerprints from the panel and the switches and trying to cover his tracks as he tried to follow the man’s. But it wasn’t until he smelled smoke that he had any idea about where to go.  
Either the man was trying to kill himself and everyone in the building, or somebody else was.  
He ran towards it.  
He saw thick, gray smoke billowing out of the room before he saw the room engulfed by flames.  
“Myungsoo!” He shouted into it. “Myungsoo, are you there?”  
Lifting his shirt over his nose and mouth, Sunggyu ran into the flames without hesitation. It looked like it had been meticulously set up—fires started and spread at key points so they crawled up support beams and walls to bring the whole building down. It was already spreading to other rooms, and it took what seemed like a heated forever for Sunggyu to come out on the other end of it, sweating and coughing, covered in smoke inside and out. But he hadn’t seen any bodies or heard any screams.  
That was good.  
He took deep gasps of fresh air on the other side, still inhaling pollution from the fire without care now that he was away from the bulk of it. He wiped his sweat on his sleeve and continued on, underneath the strips of blinding white lights that poured in from above. He followed the light through the building, ignoring the fresh splatters of blood he could see beneath his feet.  
When he heard the sound of shuffling and pounding echoing down the hallway, his first instinct was to hide. He ducked behind a pillar and listened hard for any hint of who was there.  
“Stop it, we’re gonna get out of here, okay?”  
“What if you _can’t_? Because of me?”  
“That isn’t what he said, Myungsoo. Come on.”  
Relief washed over him.  
“Woohyun—Myungsoo--…”  
He saw Woohyun drop Myungsoo instinctively and raise his fists. Myungsoo weakly did the same until he recognized the person walking towards them.  
“Hyung?” He choked. “What are you doing here? I told you to leave.”  
Sunggyu smiled. “Do you really think she would let me leave you here to suffer?” He asked with a laugh. “She said she would never forgive me.”  
Myungsoo opened his mouth. “She—I told you--…”  
Sunggyu took his hand and pulled him into a hug, ruffling his already messy hair gently. “Thank you for letting me say goodbye.”  
He felt Myungsoo go limp in his arms and sob into his shoulder.  
“Are you two the only ones left?”  
“As far as we know,” Woohyun answered.  
“We’re running out of time. Come on, we have to get out of here,” Sunggyu said gently, straightening Myungsoo up. “Those fires are spreading fast. Can you walk?”  
Myungsoo nodded, wiping his face.  
Sunggyu looked at Woohyun for confirmation and they started pacing down the halls, Sunggyu trying to lead them back the way he came down.  
“How did you find us?” Woohyun asked, a few paces behind him.  
“There was exactly one locked door in the basement. I figured something important was behind it. Something made that man come upstairs in a rush and I guess he left the door open…” Sunggyu explained, his eyes scanning the area for any way out, trying to avoid getting to close to the flames. “He came back down in a rush after I turned the power on, too. He probably thought you guys found his way out.”  
“He was angry at the end. He got sloppy,” Myungsoo muttered bitterly.  
Woohyun reached back, running his hands over Myungsoo’s shoulders.  
Sunggyu took his eyes off the path in front of them to glance back at his friends. “’At the end’?”  
“Did you open the windows?” Woohyun asked.  
“I guess—I followed him down and he checked some breakers. I flipped them all and I guess it turned the power on down here and opened window shutters or something.”  
“He didn’t like the sunlight.”  
Sunggyu’s stride paused just enough for Woohyun to notice.  
“Is it raining?” Myungsoo asked.  
“It wasn’t when I came in, at least,” Sunggyu answered.  
“We don’t have a lot of time. I think once the storm passes we’ll be stuck here,” he said.  
“Myungsoo, it’s going to be—shit.” Sunggyu stopped suddenly and Myungsoo and Woohyun ran into his back.  
Red and orange flames filled the room in front of them and smoke was building, billowing out from it. Sunggyu covered his nose and mouth, searching and thinking for another way in.  
“Is that how you came in?” Woohyun asked tentatively, watching the fires he’d started consume the staircase.  
There was a crack from above them, and Sunggyu backed up into Woohyun and Myungsoo, the three of them stumbling out of the way as a support beam collapsed in front of them.  
“Shit,” Sunggyu repeated. He looked up, squinting into the bright, flickering lights of the fires. “We have to get out of here.” He turned around, pushing the other two around and back the way they came. “Run—run!”  
More and more crackling, and more and more crashes as the upper floors started to give way above them. They were all inhaling more smoke than oxygen now, and feeling the panic of the reality that they might die here again.  
 _Think, think,_ Sunggyu urged himself, catching Myungsoo by the wrist every time he stumbled. When they got far enough away to pause, he kneeled down. “I’ll carry you, come on,” he said, and lifted Myungsoo onto his back.  
“What if everybody else didn’t get out?” Woohyun asked, the confidence in his voice fading fast.  
“They did,” Myungsoo answered into Sunggyu’s shoulder. “He was too angry—too out of control. He knew we couldn’t have gotten out of here on our own, he could have left us forever except he wanted to get everyone else. He came back because he thought we helped them escape, but it was Sunggyu hyung who did.”  
Sunggyu replayed the voices in his head from before, trying to corroborate Myungsoo’s statement.  
 _I’ll leave you an exit, okay?_  
“Sungyeol!” He shouted suddenly.  
“What?” Myungsoo and Woohyun shouted back together.  
“Sungyeol—he left a way out—if it isn’t destroyed already—we need to find a mirror.”  
“What?” Woohyun said again.  
“We don’t know if it’ll work,” Myungsoo said.  
“We have to try. When did it work best?”  
He started walking, adjusting Myungsoo on his back every so often. Woohyun followed closely.  
“It started to fall apart when Sungyeol hyung started breaking the mirrors. She got distracted, but… the eye was getting close then. We don’t have much time if we only have the transition between the eye and the storm,” he answered, his voice strained and tired.  
“We’re gonna get out of here. Hang in there, Myungsoo,” he said.  
Myungsoo gave a weak thumbs up and rested his head on Sunggyu’s shoulder.  
“There has to be a mirror around here somewhere, right?”  
“It was how the woman and the monster communicated. I don’t know if this would exist without a link to the other place we were.”  
Sunggyu cocked his head.  
“I don’t know how it works,” Myungsoo said before he could ask. “I just… this place is real, but only _now._ Only under certain circumstances.”  
“But there has to be something that ties it to where we were before? Is that what you’re saying?” Woohyun asked.  
Myungsoo nodded.  
“Well let’s find it. Fast.” Sunggyu checked behind him before choosing a direction and walking, hoping that that link was somewhere on this floor. He was feeling weaker by the minute, but he couldn’t give up.  
Not now.  
Not after everything they’ve done to stay alive.  
He wasn’t going to waste the chance his sister gave to him.  
“Hyung.” Woohyun grabbed onto his shoulder. “Do you hear that?”  
He could barely hear anything over the rage of the fires around them, the sound of the building crackling and collapsing as the flames consumed it. If he listened hard, he could hear the crashing getting louder, closer.  
“Shit. Run, Woohyun!”  
“What?”  
“The building is coming down—run!”  
Sunggyu followed him through the narrow halls.  
“What about a mirror?” he shouted behind him, running without knowing where to go.  
“We have to go somewhere you haven’t gone before—somewhere they were trying to keep you away from.”  
Woohyun led the way, and Sunggyu followed, trying to keep Myungsoo conscious as they ran through the building.  
“There—that wall--,” Sunggyu stammered, “take Myungsoo—it’s warped…”  
Sunggyu passed Myungsoo onto Woohyun’s back and ran to the wall, feeling around for an opening. The fires hadn’t gotten this far quite yet, but they were close. He could hear the creaking of the building overhead and the spitting of the flames. The concrete wouldn’t burn, but all the wooden supports were burning and breaking, the furniture and floors above them were lit and falling through onto them.  
He kicked the wall in, nearly falling into a hidden room.  
Small embers and flames were falling through the ceiling, with piles of debris threatening to spread at any second.  
There was a mirror on the far wall.  
“Woohyun!” He shouted, waving him over. “Hurry!”  
Woohyun ran through the doorway, stopping just short of the mirror. He glanced back at Sunggyu before looking back to the mirror. The parking garage of the other hotel was reflected in the mirror.  
“Hyung, it’s on fire too--…” He could barely hear himself over the sound of a crash.  
He felt arms around him, and a jerk forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This went through like three or four different versions before I finally came to this one so sorry it took longer than I anticipated!
> 
> I know I said this before but I'm gonna try to get this done before the end of March 2018. I didn't really expect it to get this long but here we are lol thanks for sticking with it, everybody.


	23. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everybody had a happy and cheerful holiday season!  
> Good luck in the new year!

They’d escaped.  
They’d gotten out, and they knew that the man couldn’t follow them.  
It felt good at first—relief washed over them, briefly. But their friends were still inside. They needed, more than anything, a plan before they stormed the building to try to get them back, but they didn’t have much time, and Hoya couldn’t run with his bad ankle.  
Sungyeol explained what he knew and understood—there was something about the storm and the building. “This whole thing was set up from the beginning. The trip, the storm, Hyung running away and winding up here? Everything was set up to get him and us here so that man—monster—storm—whatever it is could kill us all, too,” he said.  
When it started to rain hard again, the four of them took refuge underneath the cover of the building across the street. They watched the building, quietly and fiercely arguing about a plan of attack.  
“We should have followed him back to them,” Hoya muttered through gritted teeth.  
Sungyeol scoffed at him.  
“Shouldn’t we call for help?” Dongwoo asked, patting Hoya on the shoulder to calm him down.  
“And tell them what?” Sungyeol continued. “Our friends disappeared somewhere in that building and--…”  
A loud screeching noise, the grating sound of metal on metal, came from the building.  
The four of them froze, watching the building as it screamed in protest. Close to the ground, panels on the walls were moving, opening up to look into the building.  
Sungyeol pushed Sungjong forward. “Go check it out.”  
“Wha-Hyung, why me?” he whined, looking back.  
Sungyeol gave him another shove and waved him into the rain. Sungjong huffed again and gave up on protesting, jogging across the wide street to the worn-down building. He peeked through the small windows. It looked into the parking garage, lit up with orange lights stuck into the pillars holding up the building.  
“What do you see?” Dongwoo yelled across the road.  
“Something’s wrong,” he said slowly, backing away from the building. He looked in some of the other windows, seeing the parking garage in all of them. “Hyung, it’s the parking garage. Shouldn’t there be a basement?” he shouted, racing back over to the others.  
Hoya stood up, grabbing onto Dongwoo to help. “There should be,” he answered hesitantly.  
“We know that the building changed—or it was an illusion or something. I don’t know,” Sungyeol rambled, “do you think that the parking garage is the real part? If Myungsoo and everyone was in the basement… can we get to them? Were they trying to get them there so they couldn’t get back?”  
“Shit,” Hoya muttered. “What does this mean?”  
“We have to go back in there,” Sungjong said decidedly. “I’m going back in there.”  
“Hey, guys?”  
“I’ll go with you,” Sungyeol volunteered. “Hyung, stay with Hoya.”  
Dongwoo caught him in the chest to stop him. “You can’t go back in there.”  
He was staring at the building. The other three followed his gaze and saw smoke coming from the back of the building. He exchanged glances with Sungyeol quickly before they raced to the back. There was a small, kicked in hole close to the ground that was the source of the smoke. When they looked through the windows, they could barely see through it to see the source of it. Parts of the building were smoldering despite the concrete, and whatever wasn’t was burning.  
They looked back at Hoya and Sungjong, under the cover, across the street. Sungjong was already calling the fire department, but they could see the worry in each other’s faces. Hoya waved them back over, and he ran a hand over Dongwoo’s shoulder. He wanted to say it would be okay, but he knew he couldn’t promise that to them. He wanted to run back in there and find them and fight. His ankle throbbed at the thought of it.  
The firemen arrived quickly, screeching to a halt in front of the building. Sungjong and Sungyeol raced over to explain the situation.  
Hoya sat down to take the pressure off his ankle, and Dongwoo sat next to him. They watched Sungjong and Sungyeol frantically trying to explain the situation, gesturing widely to the building and speaking quickly. When Dongwoo didn’t say anything to fill the silence between them, Hoya reached absently to wrap an arm around his shoulders.  
One of the firemen got on the phone, stepping away from Sungjong and Sungyeol.  
“Why aren’t they doing anything?” Hoya muttered, watching the officers wander around the area, inspecting the building and talking to each other without urgency.  
Sungjong and Sungyeol came back with a nervous air.  
“What’s going on?”  
“I don’t know,” Sungyeol answered, sticking his hands in his pockets. “They’re acting weird.”  
“Why aren’t they going in there?”  
Sungjong fixed his hair nervously. “They wouldn’t let us explain… they just saw what building it was and told us not to worry about it…”  
Hoya pushed himself up, his stomach sinking as he did.  
Dongwoo only stood up when the fireman jogged over to them.  
“Thanks for bringing this to our attention,” he said. “This building was set to be demolished soon anyway, so we’ll keep an eye on it and let the fire do its work.”  
“No!” They all yelled together.  
“Our friends are in there!”  
“A woman was keeping us captive in there!”  
“You don’t understand!”  
He looked between them all as they yelled out explanations, begging him for help. “There’s people inside?” He asked. “This was a condemned building—what were you kids doing in there? What woman?”  
Hoya sighed, running a hand through his hair.  
“Do you have any idea where they are?”  
“The basement, probably,” Sungjong answered frustratedly.  
The man looked at him, at the building, and then back at him. “Look…”  
“I know you think that we’re being crazy, but we aren’t. They’re in there, please, you have to go look for them.” Sungyeol gestured to the building, feeling hope drain out of him as he watched the amount of smoke grow.  
The man looked over the group and sighed. He jogged back over to the other officers, exchanged a few words, and sent a few of them in. He came back to them soon after. “We’re gonna look for your friends, but it doesn’t look like there’s a basement in this building…”  
“Be careful,” Dongwoo yelled after them.  
“Now, what was this about a woman keeping you captive?”  
Sungyeol laughed breathily. “It’s hard to explain…”  
The man looked at him expectantly.  
“Well she said it was a hotel,” Dongwoo said. He was distractedly looking between the man and the building. “But it wasn’t exactly a hotel.”  
“What was it?”  
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”  
“Is the woman still in there too?”  
“Probably not,” Sungyeol answered with the shake of his head.  
The man cleared his throat. “Okay, listen… you guys didn’t have anything to do with this fire, did you?”  
“What? No!”  
“Of course not!”  
“How could we?”  
“I didn’t just send my men into a deathtrap, did I?”  
“I mean, it’s a burning building,” Hoya muttered.  
The man heaved a sigh and stepped away from them, checking on their progress through a walkie-talkie. Sungyeol and Hoya exchanged a look with raised eyebrows.  
Dongwoo hit them each. “Look!” He yelled, and ran into the street.  
More and more smoke was coming from the back of the building.  
“Hey!” The man yelled, grabbing onto Dongwoo to stop him. “You’d better stay back.”  
“Where’s that smoke coming from?”  
“I don’t know…” He mumbled, and started speaking into his walkie. “What unit went through the back?”  
Silence responded.  
“I repeat--,” he said harshly, “what unit came in through the back of the building?”  
“Not us, sir.”  
“Us, either.”  
“Negative, sir.”  
“Shit. Wait here,” he muttered, starting around the back. “Unit One, how’s the structure at the top?”  
“Wet, mostly. Not much danger of fire here, but the wood’s rotted through.”  
“Unit three?”  
“It’s all flames down here, sir. We’re not finding a way down.”  
“Unit two, any sign of people?”  
“Yeah, signs, but that’s about it.”  
The squad leader came around to the back. Heavy metal shutters covered the way to the back. But they were moving.  
“Is there somebody in there?” He called through it.  
“What? Yes—Yes!! Help! It’s too heavy for us!”  
The man moved quickly, wedging his fingers underneath the door.  
“Okay, on the count of three. One—two—three!”  
Hot smoke poured out from underneath the door as they lifted it.  
“Go—go! Grab Myungsoo! Go!” He could hear.  
Woohyun came underneath the door, carrying Myungsoo. He set him down and helped hold the door as Sunggyu crawled underneath it. They dropped it, and Sunggyu and Woohyun collapsed in gasps of fresh breath.  
“Are there more of you?” The man asked.  
They shook their heads furiously, drinking in the fresh air of the storm.  
“All units, pull out. All units,” he said into the walkie. He looked at Sunggyu and Woohyun and Myungsoo, gently lifting him. “Let’s get you guys to the truck. Let me take a look at you. Can you walk?”  
“Yeah,” Sunggyu mumbled, standing up. He helped Woohyun, and they followed him around the building to the truck.  
“Guys!” Dongwoo yelled.  
“Are you okay?” Sungyeol asked, running over to them.  
Sungjong helped Hoya over to them quickly. “Is Myungsoo hyung okay?”  
“Seems like he just needs some rest and some fresh air,” the fireman answered. “He’s gonna be fine in time.”  
“He better be okay—I have to punch him when he wakes up,” Sungyeol mumbled.  
Sunggyu laughed lightly, leaning on Sungyeol. The firemen examined all of them, patching up Woohyun and bracing Hoya’s ankle, offering all of them water. Sungjong wiped blood and smoke from Myungoo’s face gently, while Dongwoo helped Hoya find a place to sit. He looked over all of them and smiled.  
They were finally all together again.


	24. Truth

The firemen separated them again, insisted that they not talk to each other. They called the police. Questioning, they said.  
Sunggyu sat by himself, trying not to panic. When he got to the station, they sat him in an interrogation room by himself. The air was still and it was silent. Thick walls kept him from his friends—from knowing what was happening around him.  
He closed his eyes and rested his head on the cool table.  
What questions did they have, he wondered? Would they be found for arson of the building? Was there a body, somewhere? Would they find it?  
He heard the door click, and he sat up as an officer walked in. The man set a Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of him and sat down across from him.  
“Thank you,” he said, taking it timidly and sipping it. “My friends—did you talk to them already?”  
“Yes, you’re the last one,” he answered, and then took a long sip of his own coffee, watching Sunggyu with sparkling eyes over the rim of his cup.  
“Are they okay?”  
He nodded. “They’re fine. They’re worried about you.”  
“May I ask why we’re here?”  
“We just have a few questions,” the man said. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket and flipped through it. “You don’t live here?”  
“No, we all live in Seoul.”  
“What are you doing here?”  
Sunggyu inhaled. Exhaled. “You know the ship that sunk recently? Just offshore here?” The man nodded. “My little sister was on that ship. I ran away when I heard the news. I wanted to… I don’t know… see her, say goodbye, I guess.”  
“I’m sorry for your loss.”  
Sunggyu took a sip of coffee to avoid saying anything.  
“And how did you end up in a condemned building?”  
He wondered what the others had said. “I was trying to get out of the rain. The parking garage was open.”  
He could tell the officer was skeptical. He flipped the page again. “The firemen told me your friends mentioned something about a woman holding you captive?”  
“I…” Sunggyu cocked his head. “I don’t know what she was.”  
The man folded his hands in front of him.  
“She invited me into the building, fed me, gave me a room… I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t leave, even if I thought it was dangerous. I didn’t care, anyway. When my friends came, and Dongwoo was gone the next morning… I didn’t want him to get hurt… I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. So we went to look for him but she attacked us. We got separated… I was with Sungjong and I told him to run… it gets fuzzy after that. I hit my head. I was unconscious for a while.”  
“What do you know about the fire?”  
Sunggyu shook his head. “I wasn’t there when it started. I went back in to get Woohyun and Myungsoo. It was already started.”  
“What do you mean, you went back in?”  
He felt guilt building in his stomach like bile. “I… got out. I was scared, and I thought it was too late. I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought she’d kill me, too. At least then I’d have been with my sister, right? I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran away again.”  
The man wasn’t angry or yelling. His voice was sympathetic when he spoke again. “Why didn’t you come to the police for help?”  
Sunggyu shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered, his voice quiet and hoarse. “It didn’t seem real.”  
“To be honest, it still doesn’t,” the detective responded. “There's some suspicious evidence left behind, but most of it was destroyed by the fire, and what wasn’t doesn’t seem to corroborate with you kids’ story 100%. But I do know that if you hadn’t gone back in there, your friends likely would have died in the fire.”  
Sunggyu nodded as thanks, but the officer knew that he took no solace in it, that his burden and his unnecessary guilt weren’t lessened by this knowledge. The man sighed, running a hand through his hair, watching Sunggyu. He didn’t know what to make of the situation, of these kids in front of him.  
“What happened to you kids in there?” he muttered.  
Sunggyu laughed mirthlessly. “I just want to go back to Seoul with my friends.”  
The man shifted in his seat, looking back down at his notepad. “We might have more questions for you later. Is there a number and address we can reach you at?”  
“No. I don’t have a phone and I got kicked out my apartment.”  
He looked up at Sunggyu, sitting back in his seat. “Parents?”  
“We don’t talk.”  
“You understand we’ll have to keep you here in our custody until everything’s sorted if that’s the case…”  
Sunggyu tried to convince himself to care. “What about everyone else? Are they free to go?”  
“They provided us with addresses and phone numbers, so yes, they can leave whenever they want.”  
He nodded slowly. “Can I see them before they go?”  
The man agreed, and gestured for him to stand up. Sunggyu followed him out of the interrogation room into the natural lighting of the hallway. Reality was setting in again, along with the feelings of guilt and grief as he remembered his sister and everything he’d put his friends through. He paused at the waiting room door, mentally preparing temporary farewells.  
The officer waved him into the room.  
Dongwoo stood up respectfully, but everyone else was unmoving.  
“Can we go?” Sungyeol asked.  
“Everybody but him,” the officer said, gesturing to Sunggyu. “As we told you all before, we might need to contact you, and since he has no contact information…”  
Their faces and their hearts dropped, and it was only silent in that time before they all started shouting out excuses and protests.  
Sunggyu held up his hands. “Guys—guys! It’s fine, okay? It’s fine. Go back. You all have lives to go back to. Once everything is cleared up, I’ll come back to Seoul. I’ll… figure something out.”  
Woohyun scoffed. “Right—like you selling your phone and living on the streets was ‘figuring it out’?”  
“Woohyun--…” he started, sighing.  
“We aren’t leaving you alone.”  
“You don’t have a choice,” he said with a weak laugh.  
Myungsoo pulled himself up. “What if he comes to live with me?”  
“What?” Sunggyu and the officer asked in unison.  
“If he lives with me—you could reach him on my phone. We’d know where he is. If you needed him, you could get him that way.”  
“If you agreed to that, you’d be legally responsible for him. If anything happened and you couldn’t produce him, we’d take you into our custody. You understand that?”  
Myungsoo nodded.  
“Myungsoo, you can’t--…”  
Hoya grabbed Sunggyu’s wrist. “Hyung, maybe shut up?” he muttered.  
The officer shrugged. “Give me a few minutes to clear things up, fill out some forms, and I’ll be back to release you guys.” And then he left the room, closing the door behind him.  
“Myungsoo, are you sure about this? You know what this means.”  
“Why, are you going to run away again?” he teased.  
“We haven’t broken the law, right? They’re just investigating?” Sungjong asked.  
“I doubt they’ll find anything though,” Hoya answered. “That building came down. No bodies to find. Arson, maybe? What did you tell them about the fire?”  
“I told them Woohyun hyung started it.” When Woohyun spun around to look at him, he laughed. “I’m just kidding. I told them it was the woman… or the fire… if we couldn’t escape.”  
Woohyun breathed easy, nodding. “I told them I started it so we could try to escape,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Do you think they believe us about the woman?”  
Sunggyu shrugged. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”  
Dongwoo shrugged. “I don’t know what was a dream and what was real anymore,” he said.  
Sungyeol nudged Dongwoo, a heavy-handed gesture for him to be quiet as the officer reentered. He offered to drive them to the train station, and they politely declined. He walked them to the front of the office, reminding them again that they might have more questions and to be sure to remain in contact.  
Instead of the train station, they headed to the beach.  
“Great minds, right?” Sungyeol joked halfheartedly as they all walked together, unspoken words and desires breathing between them. It was a short walk to the beach. It was empty, and the water was high because of the heavy rains the days before.  
“I never thanked you guys for coming to get me, did I?” Sunggyu asked, sticking his hands in his pockets as he made his way down the shore.  
“Well, no--,” Sungyeol began.  
“Given all that’s happened, I don’t know if ‘thank you’ is what I want to hear,” Hoya said with a laugh.  
Sunggyu’s back was wide in front of them. “I _am_ sorry. Who could have known that things would have turned out this way?”  
Sungyeol pat him roughly on the shoulder. “It was a nasty storm that took a lot of lives. I think that had something to do with it.”  
“Like a manifestation of the storm?” Sungjong asked, helping Hoya step down onto the sand with his bad ankle.  
Myungsoo shrugged. “Maybe. There was a connection to it—I know that. But it wasn’t the first time that she’s done this.”  
“And the man at the end?”  
“A monster,” he answered shortly.  
“Some things can’t be explained,” Hoya said. “We should just leave it alone—don’t try to explain it.”  
Dongwoo nodded like he understood, but they all knew he didn’t, like none of them did, because it didn’t make any sense. There was no explanation for what happened to them, not a logical one. The truth was they’d never know the reason they wound up where they did at that time, just that they were lucky enough to get out alive. Others hadn’t.  
They lined up at the shore, saying a silent prayer for the lives lost—for Sunggyu’s sister.  
Woohyun put an arm around Sunggyu’s shoulder as they looked out to the horizon.  
“She’s really gone, huh?”  
“I’m sorry, Hyung.”  
“I got to apologize and thank my sister. I got to say goodbye.” He inhaled deeply, smelling the salty air of the beach and barely catching the scent of Woohyun’s clothes, dirty and bloodstained as evidence of what happened to them. He smiled. “You all are with me, and we’re safe. That’s all I could ask for, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will try to get an epilogue up sometime next week! Thanks for sticking with me for so long


	25. Epilogue: Home

They sat on the beach for a long time, watching the sun break through the clouds to set. They watched the moon rise and listened to Hoya pretend to know the constellations, and then called him on his bullshit, and then laughed about it.  
“We should get home,” Sungjong said, wiping sand from his palms off on his hands. “The last train is probably running soon.”  
Ah, Sunggyu thought, the word home feeling as foreign as laughter did.  
“You’re probably right.” Woohyun stood up next to him. He held out a hand to help Sunggyu out, and he took it, nearly pulling Woohyun down as he pulled himself up.  
Sungyeol caught Sunggyu around the shoulders. “We said we’d go home together, right?”  
He felt himself smile. “Right.”  
And they did.  
They caught the last train back to Seoul, barely getting seats in a crowded compartment. Dongwoo fell asleep leaning against Sunggyu’s shoulder, and they didn’t talk again until they were off the train in Seoul.  
He thought his legs might give out underneath him.  
“Are you okay, Hyung?” Hoya asked.  
He took a deep breath. “Can I borrow someone’s phone? I need to see if I can pick up my stuff at my friends house…”  
Six phones were offered to him. He took the closest one, and called his coworker. They headed towards his apartment, and Sunggyu urged them all on as he paused in the alley he’d been staying in, just to make sure nothing had been left behind.  
It was all bare walls and dirty ground now. Nothing was left where he’d used to live.  
He tried to steady his breathing, missing what used to be there.  
“It was pretty cozy here,” Woohyun said behind him.  
Sunggyu let out a shaky laugh. Woohyun walked next to him, pretending not to notice when Sunggyu turned just enough so Woohyuun wouldn’t see him crying.  
“It’s okay, Hyung.”  
“It was just a stupid alleyway between two trashy buildings. But it wasn’t so bad if she was with me, you know?”  
“I know.”  
“No point in staying here, right?”  
“It’s up to you, Hyung.”  
Sunggyu breathed deeply, saying something like a goodbye, looking over this place he knew would never be the same.  
Woohyun put an arm around his shoulder, and they walked back together to pick up his stuff. Sunggyu apologized and thanked his friend, and promised that he’d be in touch through Myungsoo. They helped take his stuff to Myungsoo’s apartment, and put it wherever the could find a spot for it.  
“I don’t have another bed. Is the couch okay for now?”  
Sunggyu nodded, and took the pillows and blankets as Myungsoo threw them from the bedroom. They ordered take-out and ate at Myungsoo’s apartment before falling asleep on the floor instead of going actually home. But when Sunggyu looked over everyone around him in the middle of the night, he thought this was close enough to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end! Thanks for sticking this out with me, everyone! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!
> 
> Please continue to support Hoya and Infinite!!


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